17/05/2025
NEWS STORY
McLaren boss, Andrea Stella is delighted that rivals are continuing to focus on the legality of his car rather than improving their own.
Ever since the turnaround of Miami 2024, various rivals have voiced suspicion over the legality of the Woking machines, and while those suspicions have resulted in a couple of technical directives aimed at clarifying things, the cars appear to be fully legal.
Meanwhile, as the (thinly guarded) accusations continue, McLaren is tuning the 2025 season into a tow horse race... and its two drivers are the combatants.
"For us, it's good news when our rivals get their focus, rather than on themselves, onto some of the aspects that allegedly are present in our car, and that effectively are not even present," the Italian told reporters in Imola.
"And certainly, even if they were, let's say, flexi-wings like a front wing deflection, like everyone else, it has nothing to do with the reason why McLaren is very competitive," he added.
"So, I hope that in the future there will be more of these kinds of sagas because it means that our rivals keep focusing on the wrong things, and this is, for us, just good news. It's just helping our quest."
Asked what is the key to McLaren's 'new found' performance, he smiled: "I would like to give the wrong answer here so that I put all our rivals down the wrong route...
"The only thing I can say is that for me, over the years in Formula 1, I've learned that you have to focus on yourself and focus on the fundamentals," he continued. "I think when you get too distracted by what the others are doing, it's normally an alarm bell that you ring in your factory and should remind you to go back to the basics.
"So, I'm afraid I've given the right answer, so I've helped now my competitors. But you know, I'm intellectually honest, so I can't really give the wrong answer tactically."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Imola here.