Abu Dhabi repaid Stella for our 2010 F1 title miss

Fernando Alonso says McLaren’s Formula 1 title in Abu Dhabi has repaid team boss Andrea Stella for Ferrari’s title loss in 2010.

Stella was Alonso’s race engineer at Ferrari when the Spaniard went into the 2010 season finale with an eight-point lead on Red Bull’s Mark Webber and an 15-point lead on Webber’s team-mate Sebastian Vettel.

Vettel led the race from pole while an early pitstop for Alonso, in response to Webber, pitted the two-time world champion into traffic. Famously, Alonso was unable to pass the Renault of Vitaly Petrov, one of the two cars he needed to get through to limit the damage to eventual race winner Vettel.

Alonso and Stella would have one more outside shot at a world championship with Ferrari in 2012 until they both joined McLaren for 2015 during a lean, transitional period.

Speaking after McLaren finally achieved world championship winning success for the first time in 26 years, Alonso said he was delighted for his former race engineer and remarked that the 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was payback for his and Stella’s traumatising loss in 2010.

“Yeah, fantastic,” Alonso said. “I’m a good friend of Zak [Brown, McLaren CEO] and a very good friend of Andrea.

“In a way, I brought him to McLaren when I joined McLaren, so I told him before the race: ‘What Abu Dhabi took from our hands in 2010, hopefully today gives something back to you.’

“And it did, so I’m happy for him. He deserves it, he’s a very clever guy and McLaren is an example for many teams now.

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team, the McLaren team celebrate after securing the Constructors title

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

“Zak is a very good friend of mine, we will spend some days together in the next few weeks and we’ll have some fun with track days.”

McLaren’s spectacular turnaround over the past 18 months, from narrowly avoiding a double Q1 elimination at the opening round of 2023 to winning the championship as a Mercedes customer team in 2024, is serving as an example for the rest of the grid. That is especially true for fellow Mercedes customer Aston Martin, another team in transition as it bolsters its engineering ranks at a brand new Silverstone headquarters.

Aston has had to go back to the drawing board after failing to add significant performance to its cars since its flying start to the 2023 season, which netted Alonso six podiums in the first eight races and almost netted a win in Monaco.

This year Aston remained a lonely fifth in the championship, but with just 94 points scored compared to 280 last season.

“The biggest change was last year,” Alonso said. “McLaren did not do much in 2019, 2020, 2021 or 2022. They did not do much in 2023 until Austria when they were on the podium.

“In Austria they introduced a package that they gained six or seven tenths with, and that was the beginning of a series of packages that made their car the fastest, eventually.

“That Austria package, if we want to call it that, is something we need to work on.”

Watch: Why Ferrari’s Engine is the Perfect Choice for Cadillac – F1 Q&A