McLaren chief signals major team 'change'

McLaren racing director Randeep Singh has outlined the significant change the squad has installed en route to returning to a championship-winning position.

The Woking-based squad was long run by Ron Dennis, who enjoyed title success of his own during his long reign.

However, the team suffered a significant slip in the pecking order in the early years of the turbo-hybrid era, before Dennis departed his role in late 2016.

In 2018, Zak Brown became the CEO of McLaren and began navigating a new commercial chapter for the outfit.

In addition, he promoted Andrea Stella to the role of team principal in 2023 and ever since, McLaren has enjoyed a meteoric rise, peaking with a double-title success last year.

Singh has outlined that there is no “blame culture” within the squad, a direct impact of the current leadership structure.

“The main thing is just the leadership changed with Andrea and Zak, and I think that's just empowered everyone to go about their jobs,” Singh told Sky F1.

“There's no blame. I don't know how easy it is to look over that.

“But if you're doing things that are quite stressful that can go the wrong way because they're based off percentages, like doing the strategy, you sometimes get caught up in thinking, 'oh, what will people think if I make a mistake'.

“There's none of that here. You just get on with constantly improving. You don't worry if there's a bad result. 

“If there's a bad decision, obviously you try and dig into it and try and understand it and improve. 

“But seriously, there's no blame whatsoever. You come out of races where there've been mistakes.

“Good things, bad things, and you treat them the same way. So that's really empowering.”