{"id":320128,"date":"2025-12-01T07:41:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T07:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/320128\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T07:41:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T07:41:12","slug":"who-slept-worst-last-night-andrea-stella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/320128\/","title":{"rendered":"Who slept worst last night: Andrea Stella\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat is McLaren<\/a> doing?\u201d \u2013 That exact line, followed by a \u201cWTF\u201d,\u00a0is what I wrote yesterday in our internal editorial chat when I saw both McLaren Formula 1 drivers calmly cruising past the pit entry behind the safety car.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hindsight is always 20\/20, of course, but I was surely not the only F1 follower who didn\u2019t understand why McLaren had just opened the door for Max Verstappen<\/a> to win the Qatar Grand Prix and push the title decider to the Abu Dhabi finale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Why McLaren\u00a0ultimately chose\u00a0this strategy \u2013\u00a0that’s\u00a0not even what this column is about. The real point is that McLaren is on the verge of producing what may be one of the biggest fumbles in Formula 1 history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Looking back: After his home race in Zandvoort, Verstappen trailed championship leader Oscar\u00a0Piastri<\/a>\u00a0by 104 points. That was the equivalent of more than four race wins, and even the most optimistic Verstappen supporters had\u00a0likely given\u00a0up on a fifth title in a row.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Three months later, the Dutchman has overtaken\u00a0Piastri\u00a0in the championship standings and goes into the Abu Dhabi finale only twelve points behind Lando Norris<\/a>. A scenario that, from McLaren\u2019s perspective \u2013 with all due respect \u2013 should never have been possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Abu Dhabi 2010: Stella\u2019s \u201cmost painful day\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ahead of next week\u2019s season finale, team principal Andrea Stella will\u00a0likely face\u00a0some restless nights. Yes, the twelve-point deficit still means Verstappen cannot clinch the title purely on his own and needs another slip-up from Norris.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Stella knows what it feels like to lose a championship at the last moment. In 2010, Ferrari<\/a> driver Fernando Alonso<\/a> entered the final race in Abu Dhabi with a 15-point lead over Sebastian Vettel<\/a>. Alonso\u2019s race engineer back then: Stella.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the story is well-known: While Alonso\u2019s title hopes faded behind Vitaly Petrov<\/a>\u2019s Renault, Vettel claimed the first of what would become four world championships with Red Bull. Stella himself said a year ago that it \u201cremains the most painful day of my entire Formula 1 career\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Does that statement still hold true?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Lando <\/p>\n

Lando Norris, McLaren<\/p>\n

Photo by: Sam Bloxham \/ Motorsport Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

At least 50 points thrown away\u00a0<\/p>\n

Probably yes, because from McLaren\u2019s perspective, nothing is lost yet. But the mere fact that an Abu Dhabi 2010 repeat even seems possible for Stella 15 years later is, from a McLaren standpoint, entirely unnecessary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Dutchman said in Qatar that he would already be world champion if Red Bull had been as fast as McLaren in the first half of the season.\u00a0And looking at the list of errors made by the team \u2013\u00a0and,\u00a0to be fair, also by the drivers \u2013\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0hard not to admit that Verstappen has a point.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One may agree or disagree, but the fact is that McLaren \u2013 looking at Norris alone \u2013 has already thrown away at least 50 points through its own mistakes this year.<\/p>\n

Even focusing solely on the\u00a0major issues: Norris lost 10 points for P5 after his crash in Canada. Add to\u00a0that 18 points\u00a0lost\u00a0in Zandvoort, where he retired from P2 with an engine failure, another 18 points due to his disqualification in Las Vegas, and now at least 3 more points lost because of the wrong strategy in Qatar. That alone totals 49 points, without even counting various smaller mishaps.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A similar calculation can be made for Oscar\u00a0Piastri, which does little to argue against Verstappen\u2019s assessment.<\/p>\n

Stella as the symbol of McLaren\u2019s failure?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mistakes are part of motorsport, and nobody gets through a season of now 30 races (24 grands prix plus six sprints) without leaving points on the table\u00a0\u2013\u00a0not even Red Bull and Verstappen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Oscar <\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri, McLaren<\/p>\n

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Still, it feels as though McLaren\u2019s error rate this year is far too high\u00a0\u2013\u00a0especially for a team with championship ambitions. Add to that the season-long debate about the \u201cpapaya rules\u201d, though that\u2019s a can of worms\u00a0we\u00a0won\u2019t\u00a0open here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Until now, Stella had been the face of McLaren\u2019s resurgence. Under his leadership, the team won its first constructors\u2019 title in 26 years in 2024, and this season\u00a0it\u00a0defended it even more convincingly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But now, the tide may be turning, and Stella could lose a\u00a0nearly certain\u00a0championship for the second time in his career. And unlike back then, when he was \u201cjust\u201d a race engineer on the pit wall, he could this time become the symbol of an even bigger fumble than the one 15 years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Or\u00a0perhaps everything\u00a0plays out differently and in a week\u2019s time McLaren celebrates a world champion. In that case, Stella might finally banish his Abu Dhabi trauma\u00a0once\u00a0and for all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Who else\u00a0had a rough night?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

By the way: As my colleague Norman Fischer noted a week ago, I, too, had firmly intended not to feature another McLaren personality in this column after Qatar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

I would have liked to write about Alexander Albon, for example, who has now definitively lost his status at Williams<\/a> to Carlos Sainz<\/a>. While the Spaniard has already taken his second podium, long-time \u201ctop dog\u201d Albon has now gone seven Sundays in a row without points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Or about new Formula 2 champion Leonardo Fornaroli<\/a>, who won the junior title this weekend as a rookie\u00a0\u2013\u00a0yet still has no realistic path into Formula 1 for 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The question of how a driver can win the Formula 3 and Formula 2 titles in consecutive years and still not make it to Formula 1 will have to wait for another day.\u00a0Perhaps next\u00a0week in Abu Dhabi, assuming McLaren doesn\u2019t give us the next WTF moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n

– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhat is McLaren doing?\u201d \u2013 That exact line, followed by a \u201cWTF\u201d,\u00a0is what I wrote yesterday in our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,176831,813,816,913,167718,85,180401],"class_list":["post-320128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-f1-qatar-grand-prix-2025","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-mclaren","tag-qatar-gp","tag-sports","tag-who-slept-worst-last-night-andrea-stellau00a0"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}