McLaren Formula 1 CEO Zak Brown has revealed he considered promoting Andrea Stella to his current team boss role in 2018 but the Italian didn’t think he was ready.
Andreas Seidl’s departure in December 2022 to Sauber to oversee its transition into Audi witnessed Stella, who’d been McLaren’s Racing Director, be handed the reins.
The Italian had to oversee a tumultuous period in the nascent stages last term as the Woking-based squad endured Q1 eliminations with an underdeveloped package.
However, mid-season upgrades from the Austrian Grand Prix onwards transformed McLaren into a front-running force, which recorded nine podiums and a Sprint win.
McLaren has remained on an ascendent path in the opening rounds this season and that culminated in Lando Norris taking his maiden victory at Miami last weekend.
Asked what impresses him the most about Stella since he was put in charge, Brown told the Beyond the Grid podcast: “His leading by example,
his thoughtfulness and his communication, his transparency, he’s not political, he’s a team player.
“And so if I kind of play that out, what does that mean? No one works harder than Andrea. He listens to people. He listens to their perspectives. He’s very thoughtful.
“He takes everything on board. He communicates his direction and decisions very well, explains them. He doesn’t just say, okay, I heard you, but go do this.
“So, you know, I heard you, but here’s what I’m thinking. And here’s why we’re going to do it this way.
“He’s kind of not interested in anything other than performance. So he doesn’t get distracted by a lot of the other activities that maybe some of the other team bosses do.
“He just wants to go racing. He’s very calm. So when you put that all together, he’s an awesome leader.”
He added: “He’s very, communicates very well, very clear, very simple. You know, there’s no kind of trickery or fancy worries.
“He just, you know, and it is inspiring and motivating. And, you know, when he’s done, kind of done talking to you, he getting stuck into it and getting on with it.
“The impact he’s had is clear. And, you know, let’s look at the progress the team has made in the last 18 months.”
Stella’s appointment is part of a growing trend in F1 where decision-makers are choosing to hand the team principal role to a person with an engineering background.
Brown believes his role in dealing with commercial matters has allowed Stella to allocate his entire focus to the racing side to accelerate McLaren’s ongoing progress.
“I think very important, especially kind of the make-up that we have,” Brown said when it was put to him that it was critical now to have an engineer running the team.
“You know, these teams are so big now. The old team principal role was run the racing team, deal with the media, the partners, etc.
“I take a lot of that work off Andrea’s plate, so he can be very focused on the racing team.
“So I think the best make-up, at least the best make-up for McLaren is a CEO/TP role as opposed to the traditional TP role. Because I think the sport is so big now and there’s so many aspects to it that you talk about kind of spreading yourself too thin.
“You know, if Andrea took all the media commitments that I work on or partner commitments, he wouldn’t be in every single debrief, but he wants to be in every single debrief because that brings performance and focus. At the same time, if I was the team principal, you know, something would have to give.
“So, I think the scope of the role now of running a Formula One team actually kind of takes a couple of people.”
Brown has divulged that he had tentative discussions with Stella about taking over the team when Eric Boullier resigned in 2018 prior to deciding to hire Seidl instead.
“We actually kind of spoke about it,” he disclosed. “He felt he wasn’t ready at the time.
“I think, you know, he is very much a team player and I think he felt he wasn’t ready. So we didn’t promote him. He didn’t want to be promoted, but he then got a bigger role.
“And then even when promoted him this time around, when I called him, it wasn’t an immediate, yes, it was, let me reflect. Let me reflect.
“He’s very thoughtful, he thinks. And so even then it was like, well, tell me more. And what do you think? When do you think I’d be good at it?
“And he’s very, you know, kind of looks in a mirror to see what do you think my strengths and weaknesses are?
“So I think he felt he wasn’t ready in 2018. I thought he probably was, but he certainly turned out to be ready now.”
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