Andrea Stella says McLaren is still extremely early going under his leadership as team boss, despite winning the past two Constructors’ Championships.
McLaren showed signs of clear progress in 2023 – the first year under Stella’s leadership – before winning the Constructors’ Championship in 2024 and defending that title again this year. The latest success comes with six rounds of the season remaining, and while Stella says there are a number of emotions that come with winning a championship, he believes McLaren is not the finished product.
“It’s sweet, it’s happiness, it’s proud,” Stella (pictured above in honor of the constructors’ crown with the team in Singapore) told SiriusXM when asked to describe his feelings. “Proud as we contribute to the legacy of the McLaren Formula 1 team, which won the Constructors’ World Championship last year, which in itself looked almost unbelievable when we started the journey.
“It’s such a young journey – it’s only been three years and we’ve now claimed two constructors’ titles. It’s great to see all the trophies going up step by step at McLaren. So it makes me extremely proud to see things from this perspective, in a historical perspective, and I just want to share it with the team.”
“All of this was made possible by the men and women at McLaren and the fact that they wanted to embrace the journey. Ultimately it was their choice and they made the choice, with dedication and faith, with the concept that we will have to enjoy the journey step by step and ensure that we continue to build every day and not look too far ahead – [if we] Just add a stone to the construction every day and we will go a long way.”
As McLaren has gone further out of the way this season, despite this being the final year of the regulations, Stella says the team’s bold approach to the new car is something that is often overlooked.
“We focus on the journey, we focus on building one brick every day, so you don’t have to think too much about the final destination,” he said. At some point last year we realized that we could be champions and we recognized that and we kept building. This year we realized that the car was even more competitive, but we only focused on one race at a time.
“For me, an important step was the fact that last year, when we had to approach the 2025 car, we decided to be brave and go for innovation in almost every area, even if [2024 McLaren] was already quite a competitive car.
“So I have to commend the courage of our engineering department, because some of the solutions we implemented challenged our industry-leading knowledge.
“It certainly wasn’t in the comfort zone, certainly from a design or production point of view in terms of what we wanted to achieve, but this ended up being a reliable car and it became a fast car. So if anything, this was almost a turning point that maybe we haven’t talked about enough, but that was a point that I think everyone at McLaren should be very proud of.”
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