Zak Brown assures: “Andrea Stella has always been our number one choice to lead the team”

The draft McLaren Is he taking on water? Tuesday, in the middle of a waltz among team directors, Andreas Seidl suddenly left the British team to join Sauber and prepare for the arrival of Audi in F1. A heavy loss for the Woking team which had rebuilt itself around the German engineer since 2019. Immediately after the announcement of Seidl's departure from Hinwil, the McLaren team revealed the identity of its replacement... and did not look far since it promoted Andrea Stella, until then executive director of the race, as principal director. A promotion which is enough to raise some questions: did McLaren really expect the departure of its German boss? According to Zak Brown, CEO of the English manufacturer, everything had already been planned internally for some time.

“Everything happened very quickly, recognizes the American director. When it was clear that Fred Vasseur would go to Ferrari, Finn Rausing (Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sauber) who I know well, called me to ask if we could discuss a possible transfer of Andreas (Seidl) earlier than expected. My reaction was to ask whether or not Andrea (Stella) would be happy to join us as Team Principal. Andrea accepted, he has always been our number 1 choice to lead the team into the future, so we are very happy. »

Stella, a man who is not afraid of “get your hands dirty” according to Brown

Brown also revealed that Seidl informed him “after the first race of the year and before the last race” of his intentions to leave McLaren in the future, although the team's CEO admits the German's departure came a little quicker than expected. “He informed me during the season that he was going to go elsewhere when his contract ended at the end of 2025”, confided Zak Brown.

Warned of Andreas Seidl's desire to leave the ship, the American president logically called on the German's right-hand man, Andrea Stella, to take the reins of the team. “Everything came together quite quickly and we are now with Andrea as team principal, which I, our drivers and our team are very happy about, reassures Zak Brown. Andrea obviously has great experience, not only with McLaren but also with Ferrari. So, he's someone we knew, who knows the team inside and out. He is a very involved person in the racing team, which was very interesting for me and the shareholders, to have someone at the head of the team who 'get your hands dirty, therefore, to say. » 

From now on, McLaren will have to rebuild its project around the Italian engineer, whose primary objective will be to relaunch the machine, after two seasons of stagnation and even a regression among the manufacturers (3rd in 2020, 4th in 2021, 5th in 2022) .

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