McLaren promote Andrea Stella to racing director

McLaren have promoted Fernando Alonso's former race engineer Andrea Stella. The Italian engineer will now work beneath team principal Andreas Seidl as racing director as McLaren look to take the next step to break into the top three teams.

Seidl only joined the team last year himself and there is now a three-way management team consisting of Stella, who had been performance director, James Key and Piers Thynne.

As with all changes, the hope is that the restructuring will improve the team's performance. The team finished last season 4th and will hope that the changes that they are making will make them even faster.

Things are on the up and with only one more year of Renault power before switching to the Mercedes power unit in 2021, the next few years will be vital if they are to get back to world championship-winning ways.