McLaren now has ‘clarity’ thanks to ‘Stella job’ – Brown

Zak Brown feels there is now “energy and clarity” inside McLaren following a recent technical restructuring overseen by team principal Andrea Stella.

At the end of March, McLaren announced an overhaul of the technical department, which saw the implementation of three separate department heads and the departure of James Key as technical director.

CEO Brown said there was previously a level of ‘confusion’ inside the team that he claims has now been eradicated.

“I would say right now, what we’ve done, is optimise the organisation and given real clarity to roles,” said Brown.

“Over the second half of the year, I wasn’t happy with the progress we were making, and so when I got the opportunity to put in Andrea Stella as team principal – and he’s very technical – it was a move I was very happy with.

“The first thing I asked him to do was to take a look at why we weren’t developing at the pace I felt we should, and what he identified was that structurally we weren’t optimised.

“So we went about setting out what would the optimum structure look like. You then populate that organisational chart, and there were some changes we wanted to then make to optimise the new structure.

“There’s now a lot of energy and clarity inside the MTC (McLaren Technology Centre).”

Upgrades as a result of new technical structure

Stella was appointed after former team boss Andreas Seidl was allowed to leave McLaren to join Alfa Romeo early ahead of its transition into becoming the Audi works team in 2026.

It has been a difficult start to the season under Stella’s reign, albeit the Italian has inherited issues from the previous regime that are now taking time to overcome.

Brown, however, could not be more delighted with what he has seen so far.

“Andrea is doing an excellent job, or as someone mentioned to me earlier, a ‘Stella’ job,” quipped Brown. “Very, very happy.

“The slow start to this year is what I started to see at the end of last year, and that’s why we called our shot, if you like, at the launch, that we knew we wouldn’t be where we wanted to be.

“The upgrades, which will start coming, are starting to show the work of the new structure that we have in place and hopefully will continue to develop over the course of the year.”

McLaren now “re-energised”

Lando Norris had suggested prior to the Miami Grand Prix weekend that there was a new-found freedom inside McLaren which was allowing people “to try new things and take bigger steps”.

That raised questions about teamwork and the team ethic under Seidl.

Defending that side of the organisation, however, Stella said: “Let’s say the cultural element of the team has been strong for some years. We have worked in the past on that one

“I don’t think this is the reason behind our performance deficit. The reason is more in the area of actually designing and making the car.

“There’s always room for improvement, and certainly what we have observed over the last weeks is a re-energised group of people, and if anything, even more cohesion.”

Stella maintains, however, the “elements of ethos, culture and teamwork have always been points of strength at McLaren”.

He added: “To be honest, it’s something that, people coming in from other teams, they spot as the main thing, that we have a really good environment.

“In itself, it’s not enough to then go trackside and be quick, so we need to unite the cultural and the good environment with ultimately delivering in terms of designing a quick car.”