The unspoken key factor behind McLaren’s 2024 F1 title win

“Wow” – that’s all it was in the beginning mclaren Team boss Andrea Stella could take heart when Motorsport.com raised the topic of his squad’s bulletproof reliability in Formula 1 2024 ahead of the Abu Dhabi finale.

A scientific discipline like motorsport doesn’t exactly leave room for superstition, but the timing of our discussion was complicated and so Stella’s brief incredulity was understandable. To be clear, Andrea, we were not I am trying To curse you…

The previous Saturday, McLaren had secured the front two positions on the grid for the race and ultimately took victory. lando norris – and with a Constructors’ Championship rival ferrari Its a car thanks to the stop in the 19th charles leclercVarious misfortunes over the opening two days of the Abu Dhabi event – ​​The Papaya team was the heavy favorite to win this year’s teams award.

Stella was right to be cautious. The Briton’s double yellow flag mistake in the main race not only saw Norris slip from a potentially winning position at the McLaren a week earlier in Qatar, but there was also subsequent contact at Yas Marina Turn 1. oscar piastri In other MCL38 and max verstappen This highlighted how uncertain his position remained until the end of the race.

In fact, Leclerc moved from 19th to eighth on the chaotic opening lap if Norris fell behind the chasers. carlos saenz With Ferrari leading the rest of the event, a 14-point swing would have been enough for the Scuderia to steal the Constructors’ title.

It was also reported during the game that at this stage, Piastri’s comeback with a 10th point was not possible.

But in reaching the milestone just like its drivers, McLaren won their first F1 teams’ title in 26 years with a remarkable record in an important field.

Thus, among all the four front-running teams, they did not have a single credible play which caused them to lose points in 2024.

At Red Bull, Verstappen retired in Australia with his brakes firing and lost a potential Spa win due to an issue with his engine energy recovery system in Montreal practice, meaning he faced a grid penalty.

Also in Canada, Ferrari lost Leclerc due to power unit problem mercedes Engine drama leads to DNFs Lewis Hamilton in Australia and george russell At Silverstone.

Indeed, McLaren only failed to score points on two occasions this year – when Piastri was in a battle with Sainz in Miami and when Norris was performing very poorly. He Accident with Verstappen in Austria.

Technically, as he stopped in the pits seven laps from the finish, Norris was classified at the Red Bull Ring – ultimately ensuring a zero DNF record for the Constructors’ Champion in a year where Piastri had chased Michael Schumacher In 2002, Lewis Hamilton completed every single racing lap, in 2019 and Max Verstappen last year.

Norris barely passed the 90% race distance threshold required to be classified in Austria, as he had completed 90.1% of the race when he stopped with his MCL38 to continue after contact with Verstappen on Lap 64. Was.

Stella – as charming and insightful as ever – finally answered our inquiry as to how McLaren has maintained such excellent reliability into 2024.

His answer recalled his previous career experience working as a performance and race engineer at Ferrari, which had raised the bar on F1 reliability during his five world title duels with Schumacher during this period in the early 2000s. .

“The position we are in in terms of the constructors’ championship is not only because we have been able to build a car that was, on average, competitive at most circuits, we (also) have drivers who have used this car , often, to the best of your ability,” Stella said.

“But certainly from an operational point of view and from a reliability point of view the standards that the team has been able to achieve so far, in my career in Formula 1, they make me think about my early 2000s years at Ferrari. Where credibility was a kind of religion and standards were very high.

“In every Formula 1 team, you do not achieve these results in an unstructured way.

“This is the result of investing in this area – operations and reliability – investing money, investing in people, (and) changing the organization in terms of how we deal with reliability and culture.

“With this question, you give me the possibility to evaluate the work done and the quality of the work in this area.

“But when I talk about reliability in our team briefings I say that I think it’s the worst thing we can do in Formula 1.

“Because you are always as good as yesterday. No credits are accumulated – because every new session, every new race, can present a situation, a problem.

“So, the only thing you can do is stay super focused, super active and see where the next problem will come from.”