“Stella was always our number one choice to replace Seidl claims McLaren CEO Zak Brown, who believes that Andrea Stella’s promotion from within to Formula 1 team boss will ease the transition between team managers.

McLaren’s Zak Brown says Andrea Stella is the number one choice to replace Andrea Seidl as team principal and that the promotion of his executive race director will ease the transition internally.

It was announced on Tuesday that Andreas Seidl has been appointed CEO of Sauber. The McLaren team has released the German three years early to allow him to take up this opportunity and has also announced the promotion of its current executive race director Andrea Stella to team principal.

McLaren CEO Zak Brown said, “The response I’ve had from the race team about Andrea’s appointment has been predictably very good.”

“And since we are trying to build a team to get back into the fight for the world championships, it has to be a team effort, the transition will be easier than bringing in someone from outside because it takes a lot longer.”

“If we hadn’t had Andrea, that might have been an alternative to consider, but it was very clear to us very quickly that Andrea was the one we wanted to see leading the team.”

“I think any team or company for that matter, it’s about the sum of the individuals and the ways of working. Andreas has done a great job, but I’m confident that Andrea will take over from here and take us forward.”

“We never considered hiring from outside”

Brown stressed that McLaren had never considered an external replacement once it was clear that Seidl was leaving the team.

“I had a conversation with Andrea, knowing that Andreas Seidl would be moving on for the [2023] season. After several conversations, Andrea accepted the role, which then put us in a very comfortable position to move forward because he was always our number one choice to lead the team,” said Brown.

“Everything fell into place quite quickly and here we are now with Andrea as team head, which I, our drivers, our team are extremely happy about.”

Andrea Stella joined McLaren from Ferrari as head of race operations in 2015 before being appointed the British team’s performance director in 2018 and executive race director in 2019.

“Andrea obviously has valuable experience, not only with McLaren, but also a rich history with Ferrari, he is someone we knew and who knows the team in great detail.”

“He’s someone who is very involved in the race team, which was of great interest to me and the shareholders. We wanted to have someone at the helm of the team who gets their hands dirty, so to speak. We’re very happy,” concluded Zak Brown.