After the sudden departure of Andreas Seidl from McLaren, Andrea Stella was quickly announced as the team principal for the Woking-based team from 2023 onwards. Despite this sudden change in management, Lando Norris has expressed his gratitude towards Stella for commandeering the recovery of the team.
After the Papaya team rounded up an astonishing turnaround at the Abu Dhabi GP, Norris exclaimed, “I’m very, very happy with having him where he is. It settles a lot for the team, I guess on the weekend in terms of racing and qualifying and all of that, but I couldn’t ask for a better team principal. So, yeah, grateful,” as quoted by Motorsport Week.
At the start of the year, the MCL60 was woefully sluggish and suffered from an underdeveloped aerodynamic concept. However, the iconic British team kept chipping away with incremental upgrades and finally unlocked that latent pace which made them arguably the 2nd fastest car on many occasions in the latter half of the season.
Seidl was originally planned to leave the team at the end of 2025. That being said, the German was in a hurry to join the Audi project at Sauber. Hence, Andrea Stella was chosen as the man to steer McLaren back to winning ways. And in all honesty, he’s the one who was able to keep Norris faithful to McLaren despite growing interests from rivals.
Andrea Stella forced the hand of a discontent Lando Norris with tangible MCL60 progress
The way the 2023 season had for Norris with an excruciatingly slow MCL60, he was tipped to defect to one of McLaren’s rivals. With Red Bull potentially knocking, the team’s resurgence spearheaded by Stella eventually changed his mind and pledge his loyalty to the team.
For many in the paddock, McLaren’s staggering rise to the front of the field came as a surprise. However, Stella was the one who had proclaimed at the start of the season that despite missing their developmental targets, the team were on a path to clawing back performance. That is exactly what transpired over the course of the season.
With a solid foundation now under them, the team is looking extremely competitive for 2024. The pace differential to Red Bull now seems lesser than ever and with some right work in the wind tunnel over the winter break, the team look on course to challenging the Bulls for glory next year.
The first item on their agenda for 2024 would be to help Lando Norris secure his maiden F1 Grand Prix win.
