McLaren Racing boss Zak Brown gave credit where credit was due, highlighting the merits of F1 team principal Andrea Stella who "unleashed the awesome talent" residing within the Woking-based outfit.
Stella - who joined McLaren in 2015 - was placed at the helm of team papaya by Brown in the wake of the departure at the end of last year of Andreas Seidl who left the team to join Sauber as the group's new CEO.
Stella's first order of business was to put together a comprehensive development plan for the outfit's MCL60, a car that fell short of McLaren's expectations at the outset in terms of its development during its design phase.
But parallel to establishing the car's transformative cycle, Stella also made wholesale changes to McLaren's engineering department that included the exit of technical director James Key and the creation of a new three-way management structure.
Although McLaren endured a difficult start to its 2023 campaign, once its development programme hit the track in Austria, significant gains ensued over the summer allowing the outfit to become a regular podium contender.
In Japan recently, Brown lavished praise on Stella, the chief architect of McLaren's transformation.
"It’s the same people that produced our car in Bahrain that are producing this great racing car now," commented the McLaren boss.
"I think you got to give a lot of credit to Andrea Stella and his whole leadership team and his leadership style, because he’s really unleashed the awesome talent that we’ve had in the factory.
"It’s the same people – so great leadership, great teamwork, collaboration, communication, and just hats off to everyone back to the factory and at the track for the awesome work they’ve done.
"They’ve kept their head down and just gotten on with it. We need to keep pushing."
McLaren's summer momentum has carried it up to P5 in F1's Constructors' standings, but just 49 points behind Aston Martin which has so far failed to recover its early season form.
Lando Norris believes that McLaren can overhaul Team Silverstone in the championship, but Stella insists he isn't fixated on reeling in a rival but rather on keeping the team's head down and maximizing its package.
"The way we look at things is when you lead a team, or when you are part of the team, you don’t want to get overwhelmed by our need to do that," the Italian explained.
"You almost need to focus on what’s the next right step to do. So our narrative, our message, is always about how we need to out-develop our competitors.
©McLaren
"We need to make sure we don’t have reliability problems. And we need to operate well on the track to exploit our competitiveness.
"Then we’ll see where we are at the end of the race, at the end of the championship, if that makes sense. It’s just how you approach things when you are inside a team.
"Because, otherwise, if you just think about your target, targets are good for a conversation. But it’s not good for doing the target."
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