Two years ago, Andrea Stella was honest, immediately announcing an uphill start—marked by extreme difficulties—for McLaren. Mistakes had been made in the design of the 2023 car, and the team quickly took corrective action, later producing a B-spec version that radically changed the fate and future of the British team during the season.
Forty-eight months later, the Italian team principal of McLaren has painted the opposite picture of his team’s situation. The numbers, at least on paper, are there. They are convincing. And they do so beyond the Constructors’ title won just weeks ago. Today, McLaren has debuted the MCL39 on track, the successor to the title-winning car that must do even better: win everything.
And if Stella was honest two years ago in providing a real picture of McLaren’s situation, this should give rivals cause for concern. Then, as always, the track will do the talking. But the Italian manager’s words have the tone of a “statement,” as the English would say. A warning, as we would say in Italy.
“On paper, the 2025 car should be a good step forward. I’m happy to have maintained the development pace of the last two years. Looking at the long term, I think this step forward is actually in line with some of the other updates or developments we made in 2023 in Austria and Singapore. And then in 2024, for example, in Miami, and later in Mexico and Austin.”
“I believe that, at least according to our numbers, the 2025 car should follow this trajectory, which in itself is already good news. It means we haven’t exhausted our momentum.”
Stella went into more detail, explaining what Woking’s engineers focused on to create a car better than the already excellent MCL38.
“In terms of car improvement, we have mainly focused on downforce and aerodynamic efficiency—this is by far the most important goal, and it is what we aimed to achieve with this new car, which is innovative. It is a car where we have tried to raise the bar in many areas, including the fundamental layout. This was something we carefully evaluated because the MCL38 was already a competitive car, so we had to be conscious and cautious about how much we wanted to innovate. But in the end, we actually chose a relatively aggressive approach in terms of the amount of innovation in this car.”
“The main objective is to achieve aerodynamic efficiency so that our aerodynamic colleagues have volumes to use for their geometries. At the same time, we still wanted to make some improvements in terms of tire interaction and what can be done to improve long-term race pace in particular, and I think these are fundamentally the two main areas.”
“Of course, there is also fine-tuning of the suspension in terms of mechanical grip, but today, suspensions tend to serve aerodynamics.”
In short, a kind of extreme optimization of all key areas of the car that brought the Constructors’ Championship back to Woking after 26 years—the MCL38.
“Virtually every fundamental component of the car’s layout has been subject to some new development, sometimes not just for marginal gains but to explore some technical development opportunities. As I said, most of the time, to meet aerodynamic requirements or, in some cases, mechanical grip needs.”
“From the front wing to the gearbox structure, everything has been optimized—sometimes incrementally, sometimes substantially.”
“The car we saw today is essentially the one that will run the tests in Bahrain. We haven’t changed our development approach. We’ve simply tried to be as fast as possible in this regard, which means we will have several updates during the early races of the season. This approach would have been the same even without next year’s regulation changes.”
“Our approach has not changed. We have tried to be aggressive, seeking to extract as much potential and performance as possible right from the start. I believe that if we did not adopt this way of working, the advantage we had would quickly disappear. And, as we saw last year, going from fourth to eighth place can happen in an instant. That’s why we will push hard with updates and see if we can develop more than our rivals on the 2025 cars.”
Finally, there was also a comment about his drivers. Oscar Piastri is still in his development phase, but even this year, he could have a say in the championship if the MCL39 meets expectations. However, the focus of the questions directed at Stella was Lando Norris. In 2024, he still showed some immaturity in fighting for the title, despite having the best car for two-thirds of the season.
Andrea Stella, however, believes that the Briton has grown and learned a lot from the situations he faced last season.
“Last year, Lando accumulated most of the gap to Max in the championship in the first part of the season when we were the fourth-best team, before introducing our updates in Miami. Then, he maintained the gap that existed, and with the improved car, we were able to fight for the podium almost every time. Furthermore, Lando grew a lot over the season and was very consistent. Just look at the number of podiums he achieved. From Miami onwards, Lando scored more points than Max. The point is that we are very fortunate to have two drivers like Lando and Oscar.”
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