Andrea Stella rejects Red Bull question: 'I have enough to do at McLaren'

Andrea Stella insists he has enough on his plate at McLaren to worry about the situations facing rival F1 team principals, having been asked what he would do in Laurent Mekies' position at Red Bull.

The Milton Keynes-based squad is fighting to keep star driver Max Verstappen, who is most closely linked with McLaren, where his long-time race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase is heading.

Compounding that plight, the RB22 has proven a troublesome car to rein in, and its rotating rear wing has caused the Dutchman to have two high-speed incidents in recent weeks — at the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone, respectively — something the 28-year-old is openly unhappy about.

It has not been a straightforward start to the campaign at McLaren, either, where Lando Norris has been besieged with reliability issues and the MCL40 has thus far seldom looked a car capable of fighting for victories and, at times, podiums.

So when asked what he would do if he were in Mekies' shoes, Stella was quick to highlight the considerable amount of work facing him and his team, as the defending constructors' champion attempts to claw back the lap time it is losing to Mercedes and Ferrari.

"You mean, if I were Laurent?" the Italian responded to media, including RacingNews365. "Well, you know what, I have enough to do at McLaren to gain half a second in the shortest amount of time.

"We don't have to forget that we haven't had a good start of the season from a reliability point of view either, and this goes in the power unit area, but it also goes in the chassis area."

Stella pointed to the British Grand Prix, where he felt the team pitted Oscar Piastri a lap too late to illustrate his argument.

"Still today, from an operational point of view, I'm here saying that we should have stopped Oscar one lap earlier, and we would have saved some race time," he said.

"So, I think, as Andrea Stella, there's enough to do at McLaren not to think about what Laurent should do."

Whilst sidestepping the question at hand, the 55-year-old did have some warm words to say about his peer, adding: "Laurent is very capable; he's very intelligent, very competent, so I'm sure he will do everything that is necessary, and McLaren and Red Bull hopefully will be able to join Mercedes and Ferrari, and we can have an even more exciting Formula 1 in the second part of the season."