F1 News: McLaren Team Principal Sheds Light On Ferrari's 2023 Car - "They Are Very Happy..."
McLaren's new team principal, Andrea Stella, has revealed that he knows "Ferrari are very happy with the new car" ahead of the 2023 season.
Stella worked in the Ferrari team as an engineer for 15 years for Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen, and Fernando Alonso. He then made the move to McLaren in 2015 along with Alonso.
It was announced just after the 2022 season that Mattia Binotto would be leaving Ferrari as team principal at the end of the year. This spurred on a string of other announcements of team principal's moving.
Taking Binotto's place at Ferrari is Frederic Vasseur, who is moving from Alfa Romeo. Andreas Seidl is making the move from McLaren's to Alfa Romeo, and this is how Stella got promoted to McLaren team principal.
During an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport, Stella commented on how he sees the start of the 2023 season. He said that he knows Ferrari are already happy with their car for the upcoming season and that he also has high expectations from Mercedes. He explained:
"The teams to beat also in the next F1 season are Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes, which at the moment compete in a different category from ours.
"I expect a big reaction from Mercedes, even though I know that at Ferrari they are very happy with the new car and so they will definitely have a competitive start.
"For us in McLaren I still expect a difficult start, but I'm optimistic for the second part of the season. The most important goal is to make a fast car. In this sense it is essential to define the goals in a simple way, perhaps arriving there with solutions that can also be very complex.
"We need to recover a second, a second and a half on the others. The others will also continue to grow and therefore we are called to grow even faster.
"We must in any case remain realistic, aware that we have structural limitations."