"It was quite difficult to understand who was doing what" - McLaren boss admits old team model was a bit 'confusing'

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has said that it was difficult for him to understand the team model when he first joined the team in 2015.

Stella joined as Fernando Alonso's racing engineer, a role he served for the Spaniard at Ferrari. Since then, the Italian has grown into the team and found himself in the leadership role of team principal this season. He told MotorsportWeek:

“At the time, when I joined McLaren in 2015, there were three Technical Directors. I think the separation of competence was very confusing, even for internal people it was quite difficult to understand who was doing what.

"Now the first difference is we know exactly what the criteria is for this separation. We want, in the structure that we have deployed, to have clear leadership in relation to the three fundamental areas to make a quick car in the modern F1, which are aerodynamics, car concept and engineering."

Stella continued:

“So we wanted to have this model clearly in place as a way of answering the question that Zak (Brown, McLaren CEO) and I have shared right from day one in my role as team principal – how do we create a performance-led organisation? We needed an approach from a modeling point of view for the Formula 1 team.”

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"I think there’s a misunderstanding when it comes to decision-making in F1" - McLaren team boss

Andrea Stella has said that making big decisions in the sport is not a one-person job and requires multiple minds to come together to reach a conclusion. He said:

“I think there’s a misunderstanding when it comes to decision-making in F1. I think people think you are there all the time with someone making a decision. In reality, it is much more about creating competitive ideas because this is what leads to natural decisions; this is the position in which we want to put McLaren in the future."

He continued:

“We don’t want to be at a very comfortable table with somebody in charge making all the decisions but very uncompetitive in terms of the ideas we bring to the table or actually being in charge setting an upper limit to the level and quality of the ideas the group generate.”

It will be fascinating to see if McLaren can fight for race wins, podiums and championships consistently under Stella.