Zak Brown gave his verdict on "an exciting 24 hours" in which almost half of the teams on the Formula 1 grid changed their team principal.
It began on Monday afternoon, when Williams announced the surprise news that Jost Capito will leave the team after two years in charge. The team which finished bottom of the constructors' standings has yet to reveal who will take over from the German.
But on Tuesday morning came a flurry of moves elsewhere. Ferrari confirmed the expected appointment of Frederic Vasseur to replace the outgoing Mattia Binotto. The Frenchman has not been replaced at Alfa Romeo, though Andreas Seidl has joined the Sauber-backed team as its new chief executive.
So McLaren, in need of a new team principal themselves after Seidl's departure, have promoted their executive racing director Andrea Stella into the role. At a press conference discussing that change, chief executive Brown was asked for his thoughts on those changes involving four of the 10 teams on the grid.
He replied: "It's been an exciting 24 hours, 40% of the grid has changed. Formula 1 is a very fast paced, performance-driven business. All I can speak to is McLaren's situation – I don't have the visibility to speak about Ferrari. I thought Mattia [Binotto] did a good job this year, they were very competitive. Jost [Capito] obviously had challenges."
On what McLaren's management structure will look like after the change, he added: "I think from our standpoint, what I'm looking for from Andrea is total responsibility for performance of the Formula 1 team. All these teams, some are structured similarly and some differently.
"It's a team effort so I will continue to do what I think I do best which is on the commercial and marketing side, bringing in the best people and giving them the resources they need to do the job to the best of their ability. And, ultimately, Andrea's responsibility is the performance of the Formula 1 team."
McLaren's decision is different from those made by their rivals, as Stella was an internal hire while others chose to bring in a fresh face from the outside. On that, Brown made it clear the Italian had been the top choice from the beginning and a note of pride could be heard in his voice as he talked about his team's promotion culture.
He said: "We've done a lot of promotion from within – we've got a really solid racing team. The response I've had from the racing team about Andrea's employment has been predictably very well-received. As we try to rebuild the team to getting back to competing for the world championships, it has to be a team effort.
"This feels like we won't miss a beat, versus introducing someone from the outside because that takes quite a lot of time to get up to speed. If we didn't have Andrea that would have been an alternative to look at, but it was very clear to all of us very quickly that Andrea was who we wanted to have on the team."
