Oscar Piastri says he feels no pressure to deliver on McLaren’s lofty expectations because he believes the standards he sets for himself are higher than those imposed by the team.
The highly rated driver was the subject of an intense legal battle between Alpine and McLaren last year, with the latter eventually succeeding in prizing the Australian away.
Despite a challenging start to the campaign for the Woking-based side, McLaren CEO Zak Brown declared back in May that Piastri was a ‘future World Champion’ calibre driver.
The McLaren rookie has recently proven why McLaren was so desperate to secure his services since the British camp introduced substantial upgrades midway through the year, converting second place on the grid in the Belgium Grand Prix Sprint Race.
But Piastri asserts handling the expectations of his team pales into insignificance when he considers the intense levels of pressure he places on himself to perform.
“It’s nice to have those comments and the belief from Zak and the whole team, that they’ve got belief in me, and also, we’re not here to mess around, that that’s what we’re here to try and achieve,” Piastri told Speedcafe.
“Granted, I also want to achieve that, and probably even more so than Zak does.”
Expanding on his own inner belief, Piastri continued: “That sort of comment and compliment is similar to what I’ve had in my junior categories, where I’ve always tried to set higher standards for myself than anyone else.
“With that way of thinking, the most pressure, I guess, always comes from yourself, and in some ways, makes dealing with external pressure a bit easier.
“But yeah, it’s certainly nice to have that belief and hear those words from Zak, and hopefully we can achieve that together one day.”
McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has accompanied Brown in heaping praise on Piastri, highlighting he already possesses the attributes needed to become a title winner.
“First of all, you see the speed,” Stella examined. “Drivers who have the potential to become World Championship material need to have a natural speed, which we saw straightaway.
“Then they need to have the head – the capacity, the capability to use their talent, which Oscar establishes in an interesting way.
“He keeps his head very clean of noise, and disturbances. He has a strong attitude to learning because he doesn’t distract himself.
“We saw this straightaway, in testing, but also in the early races of the season, and then it became more apparent as the car became competitive that he can compete at the top of Formula 1.
“So it’s a natural talent, a capability to learn, and then he’s a good person, with a set of values, ethics, ethos.
“It is these three elements that are part of the race craft, that World Champion craft, that we can see in Oscar.”
