51. Andrea Stella

Andrea Stella (born 22 February 1971) is an Italian engineer, currently the Team Principal of the McLaren F1 Team. He was previously Performance Engineer and Race Engineer at Scuderia Ferrari.

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Andrea has two decades of Formula 1 experience, which includes a 14-year spell at Ferrari that began in 2000. Before being a Performance Engineer for Michael Schumacher (2002-2006), his first role was Performance Engineer in its test team and then Kimi Räikkönen (2006-2008).

In 2009, he was Race Engineer for the latter before performing the same role for Fernando Alonso between 2010 and 2014. He graduated from the Sapienza University of Rome with a degree in Aerospace Engineering.

Andrea Stella joined McLaren in 2015 as Head of Race Operations, moving to Performance Director in 2018.

Andrea Stella has been working as Executive Director, Racing since 2019. Forming a crucial part of our new-look leadership team, he worked directly beneath now-former Team Principal Andreas Seidl as we began resetting and entering a fresh new era for McLaren.

During this time, Andrea has played a crucial role in what Zak called “McLaren’s ongoing journey back to the front of the grid.” As Zak states, it’s a long-term plan with ups and downs, but it has already included several successes.

Since Andrea joined, we’ve enjoyed our strongest Constructors’ Championship since 2012, with third in 2020 and two fourth-place finishes and fifth this season – a significant improvement on the ninth-place finish in his first season.

Not to mention Daniel Ricciardo’s win in 2021, Andrea’s 92nd in F1.

As the new Team Principal, he’ll be charged with continuing that journey whilst improving on a 2022 campaign full of learnings, but ultimately fell a little short of expectations.

The improvements made by Andrea and the entire McLaren team were a part of the constant progression seen throughout the season. Everyone learned from the problems in a difficult first race in Bahrain, responding quickly to fix the car issues and earning P5 and P6 just two races later in Australia.

The 2022 season saw progress in all operations, with excellent performance across the board. One example comes from within our pit-stop crew and working group, who finished second in the DHL Fastest Pit-Stop standings, up from eighth in 2021. This included our first-ever sub-two-second stop, which was not just the fastest in our history, but the fastest of the season.

The upgrade packages produced on the back of those races all delivered the expected results, some with more tangible, race-related results than others. Many changes, particularly in the latter half of the year, were focused more on the upcoming season.

Andrea’s job is to continue with that work and make the role his own, having already outlined that he intends to be very “hands-on.” The idea is not to change the ship’s direction but to go full steam ahead.