Stella opens up on ‘honest’ McLaren F1 approach

Stella took over from the Audi-bound Andreas Seidl at the start of 2023 and was praised for steering the team in a different direction, implementing an overhauled technical structure in Woking while also proving to be a candid figurehead for the team towards the general public and the press.

When asked by Motorsport.com if his blunt honesty was a deliberate strategy, Stella replied: “I have a very simple strategy: just say things as they are. It’s very simple. It puts you in a solid place.

“If you try to create stories that don’t reflect the reality, that will allow you to get away with it for a short term, but it’s not creating foundations. If we want to create foundations we need to just stick with what we know, stick with what we think is true.

“Eventually I would rather say, ‘I cannot share this because I don’t want to give it away to our competitors or because it’s sensitive, or simply because I’m uncertain and I don’t want to offer an opinion just to show that I can talk about anything’. I’d rather say [nothing].

Stella’s straightforwardness is also setting the tone for how McLaren works internally and says it’s a value that “belongs to our culture”.

“Intellectual honesty, rigorousness – they are very important. And they are not important because they belong to me. They are important because they belong to our culture as a team,” he expanded.

“That means that this is an expectation from anybody working at McLaren. Intellectual honesty, rigorousness – acknowledging facts for what they are. Because once we know that, then we can do something about it. But creating after facts is just a short-lived approach.”

When asked how much he had enjoyed his first season in charge, Stella said that even the difficult early months of the season proved rewarding and not just the late season…