Obfuscation is an innate part of the F1 game. Teams are, utterly understandably, unwilling to allow any more insight into their designs or decisions than is strictly necessary into the public realm. Lest rival squads use any of that information for their own gain.
At McLaren, preserving the squad’s ‘intellectual property’ is a hot topic for team principal Andrea Stella. This makes his erudite media appearances all the more impressive in that he explains things in so much depth, all while guarding those precious secrets. It doesn’t hurt that he’s unafraid to call less sensitive things exactly as he sees them too, such as a fastest lap-chasing pitstop from one team benefitting its senior squad, or Max Verstappen’s 2021-like driving against new title rival Lando Norris in Austria.
