McLaren chief executive Zak Brown insisted his team "won't miss a beat" despite changing their team principal far earlier than planned.
Andreas Seidl was contracted to remain in the role until the end of the 2025 season. Earlier this year he communicated his plan to leave after that – the presumption being he had been recruited by Audi as the German carmaker prepares to enter Formula 1 from 2026.
But the timeline changed when Mattia Binotto resigned as Ferrari boss and the Italian team turned to Frederic Vasseur. His departure from Sauber, currently racing under Alfa Romeo branding, saw Seidl's switch moved up and he has already been confirmed as the new chief executive of the group.
In the hope of providing as much continuity as possible. McLaren chose to promote Andrea Stella to the team principal role instead of looking at an outside hire. While other teams have looked elsewhere for their new leaders, Brown feels keeping things in-house is the best way to avoid a setback to their long-term goals.
"We have done a lot of promotion from within and have got a really solid racing team," he told media including Mirror Sport as Stella was unveiled. "The response I have had from the racing team about Andrea's employment has been predictably very well received.
"As we try and build a team to get back to competing for world championships, it has to be a team effort. This feels like we won't miss a beat versus introducing someone from the outside because it takes quite a way to get up to speed. If we didn't have Andrea, that maybe would have been an alternative to look at, but it was very clear to all of us very quickly that Andrea was who we wanted to have on the team."
McLaren have been a consistently strong force in the midfield over the last few seasons, but did lose out to Alpine in the battle for fourth place this year. It felt like a hiccup in the team's recent progress – a year in which the team's inconsistent car and results limited how many steps they could take forward.
Describing his early plans, Stella said he will stay loyal to some of Seidl's projects, but also hinted he could make some changes. The Italian said: "There are clearly elements of continuation. I think we worked very well with Andreas, we established some very important directions and we do want to consolidate them.
"At the same time, the vast study and the complexity of Formula 1 leaves the business always open for opportunities. This is what I am thinking about intensively together with my leaders at McLaren, so that we can find the further opportunities to go even faster towards achieving our mission."
