McLaren's Andrea Stella has explained how the budget cap will have an impact on an area of spending which may not be an obvious one, but is in fact a key source of the team's expenditure. Stella admits that much of the budget is allocated to freight, and as such this will be affected by the introduction of the cost cap into the sport this season. However, he also welcomes the opportunity to make further savings and be more efficient. "In my specific area, which is obviously a portion of the overall way we spend the budget cap, I think the main impact really is that there's a lot of millions going into the freight," Stella - the team's Executive Racing Director - told media including RacingNews365.com . "This is an operational element of going racing that sometimes is kind of not obviously in the spotlight, but actually is a considerable opportunity also to generate savings and efficiency. "So actually, I really welcomed the push given by the budget cap requirement, because we generated efficiency in that area, in the way we ship stuff around the world, what we need to go racing. So that's one element."
McLaren pleased with how labour costs have been handled
Another element that Stella believes has been impacted by the new financial regulations is the cost of labour, but this is again something that he feels the team have addressed well. "The other element certainly, and still, I think [is that] the big thing is efficiency," Stella explained. "You want to achieve the same result, potentially even better result, but the labour cost in a way is another important element of contribution within the budget cap, and I'm really pleased in the way we dealt with that. "I think we have been able to generate this efficiency." Whilst operational aspects such as these have been impacted by the budget cap, Stella believes that the effect on how McLaren approach racing has been minimal. "Apart from these two aspects, the impact on the way we go racing from a race team point of view was not a big one, I would say," he said. "It's been almost an opportunity for this extra push of generating efficiency that you wonder why we didn't do that before."
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