2025 McLaren F1 Team

[Emag]

Sorry to say, but this sounds awfully like PR spin doctors coaching the drivers to talk like this. No driver, I repeat, no driver, likes competition within the team. This 'pushing each other' etc is narrative creation.

https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/48217/ma ... iardo.html

Max has said the same thing before.

So ?
Doesn't matter which driver said the same thing what # of years ago, this is PR coached parrot talk. This is the excuse teams tell the unchanged driver, when they bring in a new driver instead of his previous partner.

I linked the article because Max explains it. There are PR reasons, but there are also actual real reasons why it’s much better for the whole team when you have 2 competitive drivers.

First, the drivers learn from each other’s strong points to go faster.

And secondly, engineers get more valuable data when the car is being pushed to the limit differently by both drivers.

A contrasting example is RedBull.
Max has to rely entirely on his feel in the car to go faster and improve. He doesn’t have any pointers as to where he can probably gain some laptime by taking a different approach.

And RedBull has been stuck in this rut where they don’t care about the driveability of the car as long as Max can get laptime out of it. They have made a car that only one driver can drive consistently to the limit and it was way too late to take a step back and reset now with the new regs looming.

[Darth-Piekus]

Emag the problem is much worse. Red Bull has been developing the car 100% for Max that I doubt it's even drivable by anyone else anymore and in my opinion Tsunoda or whoever is gonna replace Lowson should not go there.

[ivanlesk]

Yeah, RB looks like place to be, and McLaren, clearly, has wrong approach.

[mwillems]

https://www.motorsportweek.com/2025/03/ ... -in-china/

Stella describing the brake issue. It lasted for 20 laps.

"We understand what the problem is, which I can’t disclose for IP reasons,” he said.

“But fundamentally, it had to do with a leak in one of the components, not in the brake line, but somewhere else, and the main action required was to limit the peak brake pressure.”

[ScottR267]

https://www.blackbookmotorsport.com/new ... arch-2025/

Rationale why Allwyn wasn’t showing in China and 4 more races during the year

[Darth-Piekus]

Now that you mentioned Allwyn the team Mclaren came to Greece during the Australian GP since Allwyn is the mother company of OPAP. I got some fantastic photos from the MCL38.

[Emag]

I usually enjoy playing old races in the background sometimes when I am doing stuff, and today I decided to replay the 2012 valencia gp. One of the greatest podiums of all time in terms of drivers, but also taking part in it, a familiar face for McLaren now in Andrea Stella.

Here he is, talking with two former drivers he worked with :


Not everyone is aware of Andrea's history before McLaren (which now is almost half of his career). He has worked with legends during his Ferrari upbringing. Michael Schumacher had great words to say about him very early on. If Alonso hadn't brought him when he moved to McLaren, he would have been one of Ferrari's greatest assets now and possibly in Fred Vasseur's position. With other people often taking the spotlight, I am going to take a page out of Zak's book here and push some praise towards Andrea.

I honestly believe McLaren wouldn't be in this position without him. The way they turned around 2023, starting with a potato for a car, is in my opinion one of the most impressive team improvement stories in recent memory. And they did all of that with the same group of people who were struggling since late 2021 with development, with morale internally being at an incredible low no doubt after starting the season as backmarkers. The only difference was the TP. Impressive stuff.

[maygun]

I usually enjoy playing old races in the background sometimes when I am doing stuff, and today I decided to replay the 2012 valencia gp. One of the greatest podiums of all time in terms of drivers, but also taking part in it, a familiar face for McLaren now in Andrea Stella.

Here he is, talking with two former drivers he worked with :
https://i.imgur.com/apARLLd.png

Not everyone is aware of Andrea's history before McLaren (which now is almost half of his career). He has worked with legends during his Ferrari upbringing. Michael Schumacher had great words to say about him very early on. If Alonso hadn't brought him when he moved to McLaren, he would have been one of Ferrari's greatest assets now and possibly in Fred Vasseur's position. With other people often taking the spotlight, I am going to take a page out of Zak's book here and push some praise towards Andrea.

I honestly believe McLaren wouldn't be in this position without him. The way they turned around 2023, starting with a potato for a car, is in my opinion one of the most impressive team improvement stories in recent memory. And they did all of that with the same group of people who were struggling since late 2021 with development, with morale internally being at an incredible low no doubt after starting the season as backmarkers. The only difference was the TP. Impressive stuff.

When there is success, I understand one/two people get the praise, but with 1k people and operations with advanced technology requirements. It is never about one person or one silver bullet change. Mclaren was investing in their infrastructure and people for a while. Of course, Andrea is doing a fantastic job and getting the best out of the resources that he has, but even when they started as backmarkes, Lando knew they would not be there for a while.

[Darth-Piekus]

Yeah, RB looks like place to be, and McLaren, clearly, has wrong approach.

I suppose that is sarcastic.

[Emag]

When there is success, I understand one/two people get the praise, but with 1k people and operations with advanced technology requirements. It is never about one person or one silver bullet change. Mclaren was investing in their infrastructure and people for a while. Of course, Andrea is doing a fantastic job and getting the best out of the resources that he has, but even when they started as backmarkes, Lando knew they would not be there for a while.

One person may not be enough to claim all of the success, but give a man enough power and one person can definitely be fully responsible for failure. In that regard, it's absolutely crucial to have the right people at the right places, not necessarily because they alone contribute so much to the team's success, but because you're limiting the risk of failure by having someone who is not up for the job run critical departments.

The fancy infrastructure and people investments you mentioned were not yet in effect during their uprising in 2023. They did such an outstanding job with maintaining that high development rate, that McLaren went into 2024 achieving one of their goals 1 year ahead of target. By their own optimistic forecasts back then, they would only start challenging for titles in 2025, because the 2025 car would be the first car to be developed fully on the new infrastructure and with the new team.

As for Lando, yeah he trusted the team because they brought him into F1. He really loves the team and always wanted to be successful with them. However, Lando had no guarantees McLaren would be the force it is today. In fact, they had only been taking steps backwards ever since the end of 2021 up until the Austria package in 2023. He even admitted later that year that he had been thinking about leaving them. There were a lot of rumors earlier that year that Lando was considering moving and had they not had that surge in 2023, he might have even left them.

[MTudor]

Many of the teams have +1000 technical people and advanced technology,but it's a fine balance to know which people are good where.
We had James Key and we thought he was the answer,we had David Sanchez and we thought he was part of the puzzle,but you need the right leader to stear the team in the right direction.

[bauc]

I usually enjoy playing old races in the background sometimes when I am doing stuff, and today I decided to replay the 2012 valencia gp. One of the greatest podiums of all time in terms of drivers, but also taking part in it, a familiar face for McLaren now in Andrea Stella.

Here he is, talking with two former drivers he worked with :
https://i.imgur.com/apARLLd.png

Not everyone is aware of Andrea's history before McLaren (which now is almost half of his career). He has worked with legends during his Ferrari upbringing. Michael Schumacher had great words to say about him very early on. If Alonso hadn't brought him when he moved to McLaren, he would have been one of Ferrari's greatest assets now and possibly in Fred Vasseur's position. With other people often taking the spotlight, I am going to take a page out of Zak's book here and push some praise towards Andrea.

I honestly believe McLaren wouldn't be in this position without him. The way they turned around 2023, starting with a potato for a car, is in my opinion one of the most impressive team improvement stories in recent memory. And they did all of that with the same group of people who were struggling since late 2021 with development, with morale internally being at an incredible low no doubt after starting the season as backmarkers. The only difference was the TP. Impressive stuff.

Andrea is the biggest technical and personality wise asset we have currently, and I remember reading somewhere that Zak initially offered this role to him, but he said he was not ready, but after the falling of Sedil and Key, Zak did approach Andrea again and he accepted, the rest is now history.

I've noticed few times how NOR and PIA would make jokes about Andrea, they talk in his voice and make fun of his remarks about their driving, even on the last race now in China, PIA said to NOR something like just don't tell Andrea ..... this only tells me how cool this guy is whit his people, how down to earth he is, and how he can be a subject to jokes but also their leader, he is one of a few unique figures in this sport, I'm so happy he is with us.

[maygun]

Many of the teams have +1000 technical people and advanced technology,but it's a fine balance to know which people are good where.
We had James Key and we thought he was the answer,we had David Sanchez and we thought he was part of the puzzle,but you need the right leader to stear the team in the right direction.

"+1000 technical people and advanced technology" was the comment to show the complexity and scale of the task, not to undermine Stella's success. His team is winning, so he is undoubtedly the best TD at the moment. Just my opinion, but there is no need to create Gods like people do with Newey.

[propercare]

https://www.blackbookmotorsport.com/new ... arch-2025/

Rationale why Allwyn wasn’t showing in China and 4 more races during the year

Yup, I work in Avenga and we had company wide info about this, plus some cool photos from the race

[mwillems]

Many of the teams have +1000 technical people and advanced technology,but it's a fine balance to know which people are good where.
We had James Key and we thought he was the answer,we had David Sanchez and we thought he was part of the puzzle,but you need the right leader to stear the team in the right direction.

"+1000 technical people and advanced technology" was the comment to show the complexity and scale of the task, not to undermine Stella's success. His team is winning, so he is undoubtedly the best TD at the moment. Just my opinion, but there is no need to create Gods like people do with Newey.

Everyone can have an opinion, I guess.

But I agree, Stella has unlocked things in the team that were previously held back.

But every team has highly skilled people and I dont think Stella can walk into any team and make them champions because it needed to have the right talent to be unlocked.

Zak had already begun making his mark in terms of the culture of Mclaren and Stella can only unlock the talent that the different individuals already possess

It does feel like folks want to apply success to specific names, but i don't see the point in not recognising that the whole team is what gets us to the top level and I'm sure there's a whole ton of key enablers that we don't hear about.

Go Mclaren.