McLaren boss Andrea Stella has compared its current Formula 1 dominance to that of Ferrari at the turn of the millennium, when he was part of the team.
The Italian joined Ferrari in 2000, the year it broke its 21-year streak without a Drivers’ title, with Michael Schumacher securing the first of five in a row.
As a performance engineer, Stella played a key but more minor role, though he soon progressed through the ranks, rising to race engineer for Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen.
It was during this time that the Finn took the championship in 2007, the last time the Scuderia secured a Drivers’ Championship.
Since then, Stella has gone through various roles at Woking to become Team Principal, overseeing a similar sense of domination that he was part of at Maranello.
Speaking at the Hungarian Grand Prix, Stella spoke of the comparisons and contrasts between both those periods, suggesting McLaren’s current trajectory has been faster than Ferrari’s.
“I was in a very different role,” he said, “so my field of view, my perspective was very different.
“But if I had to pick a couple of features of the journey that is happening here at McLaren, I would say the rate of progress we have had in a couple of years is in itself pretty unique, and possibly the rate of progress itself was even faster than what we experienced at Ferrari in the very competitive times.
Stella praises the McLaren ‘journey’
Ferrari worked efficiently and brilliantly with the team behind Schumacher’s wealth of glory, with staff such as designer Rory Byrne, and Technical Director Ross Brawn.
Such crucial figureheads were also led from the front by the diminutive but beastly Jean Todt, who has gone down in history as one of the team’s greatest Team Principals.
Stella pinpoints this as the other big difference between Ferrari’s and McLaren’s success stories, indicating that the personnel, whilst hugely talented and influential, possess less of an individual profile.
“The second one is that there are no superstars,” he explained. “It’s like a proper team journey, and this includes even the drivers.
“So, I would say these are the two main features that are peculiar of the journey that we are having at McLaren right now.”
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