Oscar Piastri has become renowned as one of the hottest properties in Formula 1 in less than two seasons on the grid, becoming an established part of the revival which has put McLaren on track to end its prolonged title drought. Motorsport Week had the chance to sit down with the Australian in the McLaren motorhome at Monza to discuss his move to the team, that remarkable turnaround, his personal development, and more.
The paddock cuts a serene setting as the evening draws near, with the sun continuing to shine through on the royal park in the historic city located northeast of Milan that comes alive when the booming cacophony of 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 engine F1 cars roaring into life rolls into town each season.
But while the track action is on the horizon, this is the calm prior to the storm. As it turns out, that would be the precise metaphor to describe McLaren’s Italian Grand Prix outing.
The Woking-based squad proceeded to land a double podium to cut the gap to Red Bull in the Constructors’ Championship to eight points. But rather than celebration, the two drivers cut disappointed figures as the chance to attain another win goes begging.
McLaren’s various post-race media commitments are centred on Piastri’s bold opening-lap pass on team-mate Lando Norris, which disrupted its 1-2 running order and gave Ferrari and Charles Leclerc the opening to take an unexpected home win.
Being within the headlines is something that Piastri has been accustomed to, though. Outside his phenomenal record in the Junior categories garnering mass attention, Piastri was making waves prior to his F1 break with his now-notorious social media dismissal towards Alpine’s revelation that he would race with the Anglo-French marque in 2023.
Instead, he penned a switch to McLaren and as the old adage goes: the rest is history.
Despite McLaren experiencing a torrid opening to the previous campaign with an underdeveloped car which saw both drivers struggle to even accumulate points, the British squad has enacted an unprecedented reversal since last summer to have now wound up as the benchmark setup in F1.
Piastri, who has capitalised to attain seven podiums, a Grand Prix win and a Sprint race victory, admitted that both the team he walked into and the rapid transition since has gone against all expectations he held.
“There’s always the plan to try and get back to the front but, in some ways, I think a lot of people, every team has a plan to get back to the front,” Piastri told Motorsport Week.
“For me, I knew there was a lot of things technically that were in the pipeline for the team with the wind tunnel and the new simulator and stuff like that. So I knew that there were things that were going to help along the way, but, at the same time, I wasn’t expecting us to be as far back as we were.
“I was expecting to come into a midfield team roughly and we kind of went from one end straight through the midfield back to the other end. So I wouldn’t really say Zak [Brown, McLaren CEO] had to sell me much. I think just the welcoming nature and giving me the opportunity in F1 was very appreciated regardless of the competitiveness of the team. Of course, I felt like the team had potential. I think I maybe didn’t expect this much potential so quickly, but just the welcome and giving me the actual opportunity to race in F1 was by far the biggest thing and I guess this success so early is really a bonus to that.”
Piastri’s meteoric rise witnessed him begin his maiden F1 campaign in the top flight with a Q1 elimination and retirement on his debut appearance in Bahrain but ended with two podium results and a Sprint race triumph.
But although he has acknowledged that McLaren’s struggles in the nascent stages last term helped to alleviate the added expectation associated with competing at the top, Piastri, having since encountered what it is like to race with victories on the line, is convinced that he would have been prepared to make that leap from the outset.
“It’s definitely not been a hindrance being at the front,” he insisted. “I think for me being at the back; I mean, I would have very happily come into a team that was straight at the front straight away, but I think it did help maybe a little bit with the expectation coming in. I mean there was still a lot of expectation and when you go up against Lando it’s never an easy comparison.
“But it maybe took a little bit of pressure off achieving big results straight away. I think now being right at the front I feel like I’m as ready as I can be. Of course, I’m still learning things along the way, but it’s been good in some ways to experience both ends of the grid.
“Also to see how the teams got through it as well. I think for me one of the big eye-openers was how motivated the team was to get out of the form that we had at the start of last year and get back to where we are now. Which, to be honest, I don’t think anyone really expected so it’s been cool to see both ends. I definitely prefer this end of the grid, but it’s just special to be able to fight in front of everyone.”
Piastri’s rookie season was characterised as an overwhelming success and, as such, he was rewarded with a multi-term extension.
However, a 205-97 point loss to Norris showed the daunting gap he had to close in his sophomore season. Piastri proved in his second outing that he could match Norris’ speed, but doing so in race trim when other aspects are involved demands a more refined skill set than out-and-out raw pace.
That would continue to be a recurring shortcoming earlier this term, but a deep delve into the data with his engineers at the Chinese Grand Prix has seen Piastri come on leaps and bounds in his race management.
As such, Piastri has demonstrated in recent races that he now has the finesse to equal his blistering speed and he can head Norris home when he obtains track position, leaving the one-time F1 race victor satisfied with how his second season has materialised.
Asked to review his 2024 to date, Piastri responded: “I’ve been mostly happy with it, I would say. I think compared to last year, I’ve left a lot more weekends happy with the job that I’ve done, even if sometimes the results have been not as good as I would have liked. At some of the races, I think there’s been a couple of weekends where I’ve not been super happy with how the weekend’s gone for myself, but I think everybody’s going to have that. For me, the big thing is that compared to last year, there’s much more fewer of those kind of weekends, so I’m happy with how it’s been.
“There’s definitely been weekends that could have been better,” he reiterated. And I think qualifying is probably the main area, I would say, to improve things a little bit. In Zandvoort [when Norris won as he finished fourth], it cost me a bit, I would say, so I think that’s probably the biggest area now to try and perfect. But on the whole, I’ve been happy with it, and I think my good weekends this year, I’ve been very happy with. Even Miami [a late clash with Carlos Sainz cost him points], even though I didn’t really finish the race, I was very happy with the weekend there. Budapest [race win], Spa [second place], to name a couple, I’ve been very, very happy with how I’ve performed on those weekends.”
The head-to-head versus Norris echoes Piastri’s sentiment on his one-lap record as he has been out-qualified 14 times to two.
However, that particular statistical dominance doesn’t explain the whole picture as the margin separating the two McLarens over a single lap has tended to be minuscule.
Piastri, though, is reluctant to attribute his greatest barometer’s slight edge to Norris boasting more experience within the series.
“I don’t really want to say it’s experience, it’s just getting the most out of the car every time,” he said. “The last few weekends there’s been a couple of races where the gap’s been a bit bigger than I would have liked in qualifying, but I think for the first 10 races of the year we were pretty much separated by half a tenth one way or the other. So I think whilst, yes, the head-to-head, so to speak, is one-sided, the gap has been very, very small the whole time.”
Piastri is not alone in being made to rue missing out on small gaps in an intra-team battle. Even a seven-time F1 champion in Lewis Hamilton, the sport’s most decorated qualifier with a record 104 pole positions, has lamented struggles in that department.
Like Hamilton, Piastri has attributed his accentuated difficulties to the current generation of F1 cars combined with the tyres upholding a narrow operating window.
“It’s really been getting it all together, especially in the last lap of Q3, and just judging the conditions perfectly is very tough, especially with the tyres we have,” Piastri elucidated. “You underdo it and you can lose a lot of time, you overdo it a tiny bit and the same thing. So getting it in that sweet spot is the last difficult step, but I feel like generally it’s been incredibly tough.”
Piastri has at least avoided the damaging battering that his compatriot and predecessor Daniel Ricciardo endured during a tumultuous two-season spell at McLaren.
As he endeavours to unlock those vital hundredths on a more consistent basis, Piastri has acknowledged how important it is to avoid ending up in a negative spiral that undoes his pure essence as a racing driver.
“I think my highs this season I feel like have been very high, so I don’t think it’s necessarily a thing of trying to become faster and faster,” he explained. “Of course, we’re always trying to become faster, but it’s more been about maximising that and making sure I do that every time rather than still trying to find it, if that makes sense.
“So yeah, just trying to get that last one per cent out every weekend instead of once every few weekends like it’s been, that’s really the key I think, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel or find a lot of time.”
Meanwhile, Piastri is adamant that his development has gone at the rate “that I expected” and he now believes that he is operating on a level comparable to Norris.
Asked whether he has the confidence that he is on par with his team-mate, Piastri answered: “Yes, I think so. I think for me the biggest thing has been doing it every week. I think there’s been some weekends where I’ve just not been on the same level, but I also think there’s been some weekends where I’ve been very, very strong.
“So I think last year there was, I would say, more weekends, especially in the race, where I needed to find a step to be able to go with Lando. I feel like this year, a lot more of the time, I’m not saying all the time, but much more of the time I feel like I’ve been able to go with him, and on some occasions be a little bit quicker. But yeah, just doing it every single weekend is the difficult part.”
Piastri resides 44 points below Norris in the Drivers’ Championship and a seismic 106 points behind leader Max Verstappen with eight rounds remaining on the 2024 roster.
But despite his own prospects this term appearing slim at best, Piastri is convinced that he has the minerals to overcome his team-mate next season should McLaren again deliver a car that has title capabilities.
Asked whether he thinks he would be prepared to take on Norris in the circumstance where McLaren’s 2025 package is a championship contender, Piastri stated: “I think so, yeah.
“Like I said, I think the highs of this year I’ve been very happy with and I think have been good enough. There’s still room to improve, but I think it’s just doing that consistently which is the big part.
“But I’d be much more concerned if I was leaving weekends going, ‘wow, I really need to find something special or really need to work on this’. It’s always just been, ‘I can do that, I just need to be able to do it every single time’. So I think next year I feel like I’m ready. I’ve certainly still learnt a lot of things through this year and there will still be a lot of things to learn next year,” he continued.
“But there’s also the case of I might not ever have that opportunity again, so I need to make sure that I’m ready in some ways. But I feel like regardless of that, I feel like I can be ready for a championship fight.”
Piastri has taken to competing at the front like a duck to water and that also applies to how he has managed the increased attention that he receives outside a track environment.
Asked about how he deals with the mental burden associated with being recognised as a leading name in an ever-expanding sport, Piastri expressed that he treats the pressures the same as he did when he was storming up the single-seater racing ladder.
“I took a step up from nobody noticing me to a few and now this year, now that we’re fighting right at the front and I guess because I’ve had some good results, even more people recognise me, he divulged.
“So there’s a lot less anonymity about life, but it’s still cool at the same time. I think the mental pressure that comes with it, for me it’s very similar to the junior racing that I’ve done. Of course, there’s much more people watching now than all the junior racing I did, but the self-pressure is still exactly the same. You always want to go out and win, get the most out of the car.
“So for me the outside noise doesn’t really mean much to me, it’s always come from within. That’s why I speak a bit about trying to work on leaving each weekend feeling like I’ve done a good job rather than looking purely at the results or the stats, because there’s been plenty of weekends this year where the results have not shown the full picture and I’ve actually left the weekend very happy. So yeah, that’s kind of how I deal with the pressure I guess. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a high-pressure situation and environment, especially when we’re now at the front like we are.”
Piastri has quipped that he wouldn’t mind his name continuing to generate clicks as it would suggest that he and McLaren are continuing to achieve big things in the sport.
When it was put to him that the spotlight could be on him as it is on his team-mate’s duel with Verstappen, Piastri recognised: “It could, yeah. If it is, it’s a good situation to be in though, and I think for me that’s the other side of it. If you’re not doing anything good or bad, people probably aren’t going to say that much, but if you’re doing something good, then people are going to speak about it. The way you guys [the media] are sometimes, you always want to generate stories and just talk about the sport. When you’re right at the front, every little thing is under a spotlight, which is how it should be really. Hopefully next year that is the case because we’re doing well!”
The biggest compliment that can be paid to Piastri is that he hasn’t looked out of place in a race-winning environment and he has made it overlooked how inexperienced he remains. His cool, calm and collected demeanour was present in this interview and that translates over to the track, where he looks destined to end up as an F1 champion.
