McLaren team principal Andrea Stella admits that losing the 2010 World Championship at the final round in Abu Dhabi was the “most painful day” of his career – and helped him became the leader he is today.
Stella was Fernando Alonso’s engineer at Ferrari at the time, and the Spaniard came into the finale leading from Mark Webber, Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton.
However a bad strategy call by the team saw Alonso trapped behind Vitaly Petrov and unable to better seventh place – allowing race winner Vettel to snatch the title.
Now Stella heads into today’s Abu Dhabi race with McLaren holding a comfortable lead in the constructors’ championship, but Ferrari still in with a shout of stealing the title if something goes wrong.
Asked by AutoRacer.it about his mindset ahead of the race in the context of the 2010 frustration Stella made clear that he had learned from it.
“For me, going back to this track 14 years ago at the time, I think you’re right, it was potentially the most painful day in my F1 career,” he said.
“But if I look back now, and I’ve talked about this with Fernando a couple of times, we actually feel proud of what we have achieved in 2010 because we are proud that we were here at the last race in a season in which most of the time we didn’t enjoy any technical advantage, and it was thanks to great execution and great driving by Fernando that we could be fighting for the championship at the last race.
“And ultimately, you know, over time, while you are proud of your victories, sometimes when you don’t win, it’s what counts the most to be what we are today.
“I hope that in some of the learnings that season, and even the emotional toughness that you gain by going through those moments, I’ve been able to bring something with me my career and hopefully also leave this as part of my contribution to McLaren”
Stella said that he and the team are heading into today’s race in a positive mood.
“The reference to 2010 is a reference to 14 years ago,” he said. “Before then I had done already 10 years which means this is my 25th season. And there’s one benefit, not many others, of having done 25 seasons in F1, it’s that you kind of have the experience, and you have the experience even in terms of mindset.
“And you know that in this kind of circumstances, you just have to stay in the present. Enjoy the present, don’t think too far, don’t think too tomorrow, unless it’s because we want to know what are we going to do for the strategy it needs to be functional to executing the race.
“But really, you keep your emotions and your mind in the present. I’ve been actually quite impressed by the team, because when I was approaching people to talk about how we were going to face this last race of the of the season, it was actually the team that normally told me, ‘Don’t worry, Andrea, we will do what we’ve always done,’
“And this gave me a great sense of reassurance, and I really appreciated the maturity that I saw in the team.”
