(Motorsports) Formula 1 team McLaren Racing has reiterated its commitment towards winning the World Championship despite changes in their team structure which saw Andreas Seidl leave the team to join the Sauber Group as chief executive while Andrea Stella took over his role as team principal. McLaren CEO Zak Brown said that he was aware about Seidl’s departure well in advance and the 46 year old German engineer will now oversee their Audi project in the coming years.
“Here we are with Andrea and as our team principal, which myself, our drivers and our team are extremely excited about. Andrea obviously has a wealth of experience, not only with McLaren, but a rich history with Ferrari, so was someone that we knew who knew the team inside out. He is a very hands-on person in the racing team, which was of high interest to me and the shareholders, to have someone leading the team that gets their hands dirty so to speak, so we are very excited.
“We have done a lot of promotion from within and have got a really solid racing team. The response I have had from the racing team about Andrea’s employment has been predictably very well received. As we try and build a team to get back to competing for world championships, it has to be a team effort. This feels like we won’t miss a beat versus introducing someone from the outside because it takes quite a way to get up to speed. If we didn’t have Andrea, that maybe would have been an alternative to look at, but it was very clear to all of us very quickly that Andrea was who we wanted to have on the team.”
McLaren CEO Zak Brown
“There’s clearly elements of continuation. I think we worked very well with Andreas, we established some very important directions and we do want to consolidate them. This is what I am thinking about intensively together with my leaders at McLaren, so that we can find further opportunities to go even faster towards achieving our mission. I will be close to the core objectives of the team, which ultimately is to build a quick car and race this car effectively while on track.”
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella
