Brown delivers two-word response to reason behind McLaren rise

Zak Brown believes there is only one key reason why McLaren has delivered a stunning about-turn in performance in the space of just over 12 months.

Heading into last year's Austrian Grand Prix at the start of July, McLaren was languishing in sixth place in the constructors' standings with just 17 points to its name, 27 adrift of fifth-placed Alpine.

McLaren had predicted pre-season it would struggle initially as it was behind in its development programme. The delivery of an upgrade on last year's McLaren, however, proved to be a major turning point for the team from which it has never looked back.

In the space of a year, McLaren has gone from being relative backmarkers to race-winning contenders, and in the hunt for this year's constructors' title as it only trails Red Bull by 78 points with a maximum total of 573 still available.

Asked as to what had changed within the team over such a short period of time to put it in the position it is now compared to then, speaking to media, including RacingNews365, McLaren CEOBrown said: "The one-word [sic] answer would be Andrea Stella.

"Obviously, it's a team effort, but he's the one who's led and driven the change.

"Andrea is the best racer I've ever been around. So while it's now my eighth season [in F1], I've been around racing forever.

"Andrea has done an amazing job of focusing the team and driving leadership. Obviously he's not designing the car, so I wouldn't want to not give credit to the other 1000 people around him.

"But his leadership, that's been the single biggest change. That's taken us from where we were at the start of '23 to where we are now. Pete Prodromou, Rob Marshall, Neil Houldey, all these guys are doing an outstanding job, but under Andrea's leadership."

Brown, though, concedes to being surprised he is "even having a conversation" about the fact McLaren is in the hunt for the constructors' championship, particularly after Red Bull's dominant start to the season.

"I think we all are [surprised]," remarked Brown. "We all went to Bahrain and went, 'Right, that's that championship'.

"But I think it's going to be an epic. Mercedes seems to be very on the pace now. Ferrari is there or thereabouts. Not too many races ago Charles [Leclerc] won.

"So you kind of feel like you've got four different teams that are all going to win races in the second half of the year. Pretty awesome. Unfortunately, the season didn't start now.