McLaren CEO Zak Brown has revealed Andrea Stella originally turned down the decision to become team principal.
Stella has been credited as playing a major part in McLaren's revival over the last handful of years, culminating in a constructors' championship triumph last season.
The Italian joined McLaren in 2015 following a lengthy stint at Ferrari, holding various senior roles at the Woking-based squad.
Stella eventually became team principal ahead of the 2023 season - but Brown wanted the 53-year-old to take on the role several years prior.
“I had asked Andrea Stella to become the team principal back in 2019 or 2020 but he felt he wasn't ready yet,” Brown told James Allen on F1.
“Andrea has very little ego, he's not one of these individuals that jumps at ‘it would be great to be team principal’.
“He just felt he wasn't ready, even though I felt he was.
“So the second time around, I had the opportunity to make some changes, I did [with the] technical director, team principal, head of aero.
“I convinced Andrea, but when I made him the offer, it wasn’t an immediate yes. He had to sleep on it over the weekend and get comfortable with it.”
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Stella made 'brave' F1 decision, reveals Brown
Stella spearheaded a difficult McLaren period at the start of 2023, as the team went public with confirmation that it would commence the year in a poor position.
However, a successful development plan in the year to follow saw it rise up the pecking order and achieve title success.
“When he jumped in, he got real serious, real quick,” Brown added.
“He identified that we were going to have big problems, which I suspected, hence the change.
“He made a very brave decision, which was to tell everyone we were going to have a terrible start to the year, which I think was the right decision because everyone was going to be able to figure that out 30 days later.
“He was spot on, we were terrible. But at the same time, we knew that development was really starting to ramp up.
“We had to manage people, externally and internally, to wait for this latest, greatest upgrade in Austria and hope that it worked.”
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