McLaren's Stella reveals why Verstappen’s title charge took off

20:59, 03 Nov

byNorberto Mujica

McLaren boss Andrea Stella has admitted the team’s 2025 development stalled earlier than expected, a decision that opened the door for Max Verstappen’s late-season charge and reignited Red Bull’s title hopes.

"You have seen how many cars they actually attempted to develop and sometimes things went the opposite direction."

- Andrea Stella.

When asked if, in hindsight, knowing that Red Bull and Max Verstappen would come back at McLaren for the Drivers’ title, he wouldn’t hold off on switching the team's development focus to 2026, Stella argued the team’s pursuit for lap time with the MCL39 had stagnated.

He said: “Not at all, because it's not like if I spend three weeks more on the 2025 [car], I'm going to add one tenth of lap time. We were just plateaued.

"Actually, to produce the upgrades that we took to the mid of the season, it was a huge undertaking. We were like, should we actually finalize? Because we were struggling to improve what was already a pretty mature project”.

Stella then pointed to all the “different cars” that in their attempt to find more lap time, actually ended up losing it after their upgrades failed to yield the expected results, adding that for Red Bull it was an easier process, since they had issues to fix in their car.

Photo: Red Bull Content Pool

He continued: “You have seen how many cars they actually attempted to develop and sometimes things went the opposite direction.

"This is because it's very sophisticated. aerodynamics maybe one day we can talk about like the specifics of the technicality and the difficulties of developing.

“I think it's much easier to develop when you have some specific problems and I think for instance for Red Bull, they talked at times of struggling to rebalance with the front wing when they were using big rear wings.

"Then it's easier to find lap time because you are effectively fixing something rather than trying to improve something that already works well,” Stella concluded.

Marko insists on Verstappen's key role in Red Bull's resurgence

Chief adviser Helmut Marko credits Verstappen’s increased influence for Red Bull’s resurgence, saying the team expanded the RB21’s operating window by acting on Verstappen’s feedback rather than relying primarily on simulation and CFD data.

Since the Dutch Grand Prix, coordinated setup changes have made the car easier to drive and more competitive, enabling Verstappen to slash his points deficit to the McLaren drivers from 104 to 37 over the last five Grand Prix weekends.

Marko says Verstappen now has a significant voice in technical discussions, and the engineers listening more closely to him has been key to the team’s revival. Read more here.

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