Gil de Ferran: McLaren bring back former IndyCar champion as part of restructure plans
- Published
De Ferran was McLaren sporting director from 2018 to 2021
McLaren have brought back former IndyCar champion Gil de Ferran in a consultant advisory role as part of their ongoing restructure.
Team boss Andrea Stella worked with the Brazilian during McLaren's last reconstruction process in 2018-20.
Stella told BBC Sport that De Ferran had qualities in "identifying and supporting talents, large experience of racing and strategic thinking".
The 55-year-old will be part of McLaren for "at least one year", Stella said.
De Ferran is with McLaren at the Miami Grand Prix observing the team's operations but not wearing team kit.
He will become an official member of the team following the race and will attend a number of grands prix for the remainder of the season.
De Ferran, a two-time IndyCar champion and winner of the Indianapolis 500 in 2003, was McLaren sporting director from 2018 to 2021.
During that time, he played an instrumental role alongside Stella, who was then performance director, in returning McLaren from the lowest point of their history in 2018 to finishing third in the constructors' championship in 2020.
McLaren have had a difficult start to 2023 which has led to a restructure that saw former technical director James Key lose his job.
Stella said: "We are going through a process of evolution and review of the team. Obviously, we have seen some major changes that affected the technical area, aerodynamics, but also we wanted to create more capacity at leadership level.
"There is a lot of work we are going through and a lot of work ahead of us in terms of identifying all the opportunities and capitalising [on them].
"We thought that as part of this process it would be really useful to have a further expansion of our capacity especially on some specific projects we want to look into."
Stella said De Ferran would have a "non-executive, non-operational role helping us in understanding what to do and how to do that".
He added: "It is a temporary collaboration but it definitely goes over at least one year. Gil is such a valuable person to collaborate with that I'm sure once we have kind of made progress in the specific projects in which we are involving him, we will have some more ideas to further capitalise on this collaboration.
"We are very, very happy too have him on board with us and being part of this exciting process of elevating, innovating the team at McLaren.
"I want to have a 360-degree look at where are all the opportunities, because we are ambitious in creating a very strong team. And in order to do that, with a team principal travelling to races for instance, it would be ambitious to think you can cover enough of what's required, so we wanted to expand our capacity."
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