Fernando Alonso, Oscar Piastri discuss about customer F1 teams being able to challenge the manufacturers, as they also praise Andrea Setlla.
The customer route in MotoGP has yielded sound results for the independent teams who are fighting for race wins going against the factory outfits. Since the arrival of budget cap in F1, it has seen fare share of competition from customer teams.
At least the drivers in the customer teams think so. There are advantages of being a works team certainly as the resources are utmost and updates to power units – if any – first goes to the manufacturer team before being pushed through to others.
But both Aston Martin’s Alonso and McLaren’s Piastri reckon the current era has worked well for the customer teams to challenge for race wins at least. “Probably it is the case now with the budget cap,” said the Spaniard. “I think the works team cannot get into an unlimited budget or test programme or things like that.
“So everything is more regulated now. But there’s still a lot of downsides to not to be a works team. So you can see it both ways probably.” To which, Piastri added: “Yeah, I mean, I don’t think you need to be a works team to win an F1. I mean, as Fernando said, I think there’s still definitely advantages of being a works team.
“Whether that’s from developing the engine how you want it and fitting it into the car exactly how you want, stuff like that. There’s always going to be advantages as a works team, but I think now in the cost cap era of F1, I think it’s got much less significance than it did.
“So, yeah, I think you can be a customer team, so to speak, and, yeah, put up a really strong fight.” It was agreed by another customer team driver, Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg who responded to Alonso and Piastri’s answer with ‘same, same’.
Amid the customer team chatter, Alonso and Piastri also hailed the work done by McLaren team principal Stella for the revival of the Woking-based F1 team. The former worked with the Italian at Ferrari, while the latter is currently working with him.
After the departure of Andreas Seidl, the McLaren board and Zak Brown made a bold choice to hand the reigns to Stella and it has worked well so far. This doesn’t surprise either of the drivers too. “I mean, he’s an incredible person, first of all, a great engineer and a good team principal now,” said Alonso. “He’s a great man.
“And I think people that is honest and people that does things with common sense, normally in life, things will go well with them. I think, yeah, he’s a great leader. And as I said, probably common sense will define Andrea Stella. And I’m not surprised that he’s doing an incredible job.”
Meanwhile, Piastri added: “Yeah, I mean, I think for me, obviously, I have nowhere near as much experience with Andrea in other capacity or just with other people in Formula 1, but I think we say it all the time at McLaren: he’s an incredible team leader for us. And I think in some ways, because I’m still relatively new I probably don’t appreciate fully the extent of his leadership and expertise as well.
“But even without that experience, it’s very obvious to me that he’s an incredible person, as Fernando said, and an incredible leader. And, I think, firstly, you only need to look at the results of the team and the turnaround of the team to appreciate that, but on a personal level for me as a driver and just getting to know Andrea in these 18 months.
“For me it’s very clear why we’ve been able to turn around and the empowerment he gives to everybody in the team… I know he doesn’t like to take too much of the credit for the success of McLaren, but the power that he gives to the other thousand people in the team is really incredible. Yeah, he’s a very good person to have around.”
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