Andrea Stella

Andrea Stella (born 22 February 1971) is an Italian engineer, currently team principal of McLaren F1 Team.

He was previously performance engineer and race engineer at Scuderia Ferrari.

Stella graduated in aerospace engineering at La Sapienza University in Rome.

In 2000, he completed a PhD in mechanical engineering with an experimental study on fluid dynamics of flames.

Stella began his career at Ferrari in 2000 as performance engineer for the test team, before becoming performance engineer for Michael Schumacher (2002–2006) and then Kimi Räikkönen (2007–2008).

In 2006, he also worked as track engineer with Valentino Rossi, when the motorbike racer tested with Ferrari with the idea of a perspective move to Formula One.

He moved to become race engineer for Räikkönen (2009) and Fernando Alonso (2010–2014).

Stella joined McLaren in 2015 as head of race operations, moving to Performance Director in 2018 and racing director in 2019.

In the latter role, he formed a triumvirate with James Key as technical director and Piers Thynne as production director, all under team principal Andreas Seidl.

On 13 December 2022, it was announced that Stella would replace Seidl as team principal of McLaren, ahead of the 2023 season.