McLaren boss Andrea Stella has denied the team must implement a change in structure in response to the strategic errors that have cost it two wins in recent events.
The Woking-based squad has become an established contender to Red Bull since upgrades in Miami propelled Lando Norris to achieve his maiden F1 Grand Prix win.
But while the MCL38 has materialised to be the fastest car at various races and the side is on an eight-race podium streak, McLaren has failed to add to that triumph.
McLaren rued pitting one lap late under a Safety Car interruption as it blundered a lead with Norris in Canada, while the Briton also headed proceedings at Silverstone.
However, McLaren’s indecision saw Mercedes undercut Norris and he was unable to respond as the team ignored the more favourable Medium rubber to go on Softs.
Meanwhile, Oscar Piastri was circulating second behind his team-mate as the rain intensified and McLaren’s choice to not double stack ruined the Australian’s hopes.
Stella conceded post-race that the side was responsible on all counts as another win evaded its grasp, but he’s quashed the notion McLaren could ring the alterations.
Asked whether McLaren would need to implement a revised structure to avoid a repeat, Stella retorted: “No, it’s not like you review your decisions.
“You see how the decision was made, you see what information we brought to the table, was this information used in the best possible way or not, what were the contributions from the various people.
“I think that’s the way you manage complex processes and when I say complex, it’s not only complex because it’s a difficult decision, but because it involves many people and you need to make sure as well that when you review that it’s good learning for everyone involved.
“It wouldn’t help very much that I learned something, the race engineer learned something, we don’t learn all this as a group so I think responsibility of the people, we go after this like we always do, review, learn and we go again.”
Stella’s stance to be unreactive to the slip-up and instead insist McLaren reviews the mistakes as a collective is consistent with his approach to the technical division.
Prior to the Italian’s appointment in late 2022, McLaren had collected a single win since 2012 and spent multiple seasons mired competing in the midfield wilderness.
However, Stella has overseen the side’s return to the sharp end, which he credits to putting in place the working environment in which the personnel are able to thrive.
“The reason why we were able to bring out a car twelve months ago that was much faster than the car before Austria was the people who work at McLaren,” he said.
“The 1,000 employees at McLaren achieved this.
“My contribution, and that of the leadership team, if anything, was to think about how we could unleash the talent that was clearly already at McLaren.
“I didn’t do that alone, but in collaboration with Zak Brown, our CEO, Daniel Gallo, our HR Director, Piers Thynne, our COO, and Peter Prodromou, our Technical Director for Aerodynamics.
“Incidentally, this team was also a reason for me to accept the position of team boss. That was a big challenge because McLaren was not on an upward trend. We were faltering.
“But I knew the people at McLaren and I knew exactly what talent lay dormant in this team.
“When I looked at some of my colleagues in the aero department, I thought to myself: ‘Hey, these are the same people who turned a disastrous car at the start of the season into the fastest car at the end of the season in 2009.’ And 2010 and 2011 were a seamless continuation of that. I was at Ferrari at the time and I often asked myself: ‘How do they do it?’
“The talent was clearly already there. So for me the most important thing was to work well with Zak and with the other leaders on the team.
“‘How do we unleash this talent?’ That was the fundamental question. And that was my contribution.”
