F1 | McLaren draws from Prema: the architect of Piastri's title arrives

McLaren's 2023 championship has been full of ups and downs, with a season on the rise after a disappointing start. The Woking team was aware of the difficulties it would encounter at the start of the world championship due to a winter development that did not respect the objectives that the engineers had initially set themselves, but from that moment on the internal revolution began.

Zak Brown and Andrea Stella, who had taken over from the outgoing Andreas Seidl at Sauber a few months earlier, thus started a reorganization of the team's organizational chart, creating a structure with three fundamental pillars with clear responsibilities.

Alongside this phase of internal restructuring, McLaren has pushed the accelerator not only on the development of the car, but also on the hiring of high-level engineers from other teams. An example is the recent arrival of two technicians such as David Sanchez and Rob Marshall who, after completing their gardening leave after leaving Ferrari and Red Bull, joined the Woking team at the beginning of the year.

However, behind the scenes there are also other interesting names who have recently joined the British team, including Antoine Okla, arriving from the world of Formula 2. The French engineer took up service in Woking at the end of last year as Tire Performance Engineer after almost five years spent at Prema, where he held multiple roles with great satisfaction.

Okla can boast an excellent CV in the preparatory categories, starting from his debut in ART over ten years ago, where he first started as a data analysis engineer and then moved on to the role of Performance Engineer in the same team. After gaining experience in the team founded by Frederic Vasseur and Nicolas Todt, the French engineer moved to another transalpine team, DAMS, which in those years had been able to win the GP2 title with Romain Grosjean and Davide Valsecchi .

Still in the role of Performance Engineer, Okla contributed to the championship victory with Joylon Palmer in 2014, also working alongside names who still race in Formula 1, such as Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon. In 2019 he began his adventure in Prema, as race engineer for Mick Schumacher, who made his debut in Formula 2 that season after winning the European Formula 3 title. After a year of apprenticeship, in 2020 the German won the Formula 2 championship beating Callum Ilott, Yuki Tsunoda and Robert Shwartzman, his teammate at the time.

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Oscar Piastri, Prema Racing

In 2021 another talent arrived in Prema, namely Oscar Piastri, on whom there were great expectations after the successes obtained the year before in Formula 3. As happened with Schumacher, as Chief Race Engineer Okla helped the Australian in the conquest of the title of the series preparatory to the debut, also obtaining the title reserved for teams as had already happened in 2020.

After a year spent in the WEC, a championship in which Prema had decided to participate with the support of the Iron Lynx team in the LMP2 class, where the Italian team was also able to take second place in the prestigious 24h of Le Mans, in 2023 Okla he returned to F2, still with the same colors and in the same role, helping Oliver Bearman in his debut season. The Briton was the author of a particular year, full of ups and downs, in which however there were flashes of talent to which he must however add the consistency that he lacked in 2023.

Following his adventure in the Prema world, the French engineer made the big leap towards Formula 1 with McLaren, strengthening the organization of the Woking company, where among other things he will meet Oscar Piastri again.