The new F1 World Championship which starts at the weekend sees three teams out of ten on the starting grid led by a team principal Italian. None of these are in Ferrariwhich after the last turbulent season closed by the resignation of Matthias Binotto she relied on French Frédéric Vasseur. The place of the latter in Alfa Romeo was hired by Alessandro Good students, an Umbrian lawyer and manager who has been active in motorsport for over twenty years. If instead the South Tyrolean Gunther Steiner is now a fixed presence in the cockpit of the Haasthe big surprise is represented by Andrea Stellaengineer of Orvieto freshly appointed as team principal of the McLaren. It has been since Flavio Briatore in Benetton that such a position was not covered by an Italian in a foreign stable of blazon and value. In fact, Benetton, which won the Drivers’ World Championship with Michael Schumacher in 1994 and 1995, and the constructors’ title in the latter year, was an Anglo-English team.
McLaren, on the other hand, certainly needs no introduction, having been a rival of the Italian teams since the dawn of Formula 1, when it entered the scene by raising the bar of the English manufacturers, anchored to amateurism and which, as written by Maurice Hamilton in Formula 1 – The official storythey seemed to “take to the track in their obsolete machines, just happy to race”. McLaren against Ferrari has become the challenge between two philosophytwo styles, two excellencescapable of renewing itself cyclically for over fifty years, also crossed by spite, spite, controversy e law courts (the millimeters of McLaren tires in the 1976 season at the height of the challenge Praise-Huntthe case of industrial espionage of 2007). Even the last World Championship won by a rider from the company Wokingin 2008 (one year after the last Ferrari title), he matured in a last surreal race, in Interlagos, with Felipe Massa world champion for 38 seconds before, at the last corner, Lewis Hamilton found the decisive overtaking to finish fifth and overtake the Brazilian by one point in the final standings.
Stella’s is a story of merit, value e competence. Despite today the main competitors of Ferrari are called Red Bull e Mercedes, the prestige of the position at McLaren remains beyond doubt. Also because Stella built everything for himself alonestarting with “simple” engineer and growing professionally year after year, even with difficult choices such as moving with the family to London when, in 2015, Fernando Alonso he asked him to leave Ferrari and follow him to McLaren. Aerospace Engineering Graduate Sapienza of Rome, for Stella the doors of Maranello had opened in 2000 after obtaining a doctorate in mechanical engineering. After two years he became a driver of the single-seater Michael Schumacherrole maintained even after the handover, which took place in 2007, between the German and Whom Raikkonen. In recent years in Ferrari Stella was track engineerfirst of the Finn and then of Fernando Alonso, with whom he made a deep relationship trusted, so much so that he accepted the offer to follow him in McLaren.
In Woking, this engineer born in 1971 landed as a track engineer and, despite the difficult seasons the team is experiencing, between the failed return of the engines Hondathe farewell of Ron Dennis and two penultimate places in the constructors’ championship with negative record of points won (respectively 27 in 2015 and 30 in 2017), his career has been a crescendo of professional satisfaction. First he gets promoted to chief of technicians, then Performance Directorresponsible for relations with the FIA, head of the areas of performance development and, from 2020, Racing Director. Up to the top step, that of team managerrole that remained vacant after the departure of Andrew Seidl towards the Sauberwhat does it mean Audi (the Ingolstadt-based company took over minority shares in the Swiss group), whose landing in F1 is scheduled for 2026. A promotion, as written by Giorgio Terruzzi on Autosprint“based, for once, precisely on what should mark every career, every important position, i.e. competence and experience, combined with an ability to operate within a group”.
Stella is not the first case of a Ferrari-trained technician who has chosen to go away to play your best professional cards, becoming an added value for other teams. Cases such as those of. come to mind Aldo Costa, James Allison, Stefano Sundays, all well-known names within motorsport, but whose successes have been achieved far from their parent company. Maranello is therefore confirmed a great gym formativeavant-garde in many respects, but sometimes penalized by a sort of funnel at an organizational-management level which prevents the best use of the cultivated talents. It has been written that Ferrari’s greatest adversary lies within Ferrari itself. Perhaps it is an exaggeration, moreover not very respectful of the rivals’ abilities, but cases like Stella’s make us think, net of the satisfaction to see an Italian arrive, for own meritsat the head of one of the most stables prestigious of F1.
