Still what might be considered a stripling with features soft as yet unweathered by age and competition yet with an undoubted inner steel, Oscar Piastri presents a fascinating dichotomy. The young Australian is in a two-horse race to be Formula One world champion this year and his youth, personable nature and easy, dry wit belie a driver possessed of exceptional maturity and the clinical execution familiar in the sport’s greats.
Piastri has given every indication he could join them and the resolute determination of the man who would be king is palpable.
“I have emotions, I still feel everything that everyone else feels. It’s just that, being blunt, I think a lot of emotions are not that helpful,” he says with candour.
Which admission may be considered a little shocking from many 24-year-olds but it is an integral part of what has propelled Piastri to a two-way title fight with his McLaren teammate Lando Norris. The Australian currently leads by nine points going into this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix after a tight fight marked by his equanimity, where he has taken setbacks and victories with the same, almost preternatural calm.
“I don’t think there’s any point dwelling on anything longer than you have to,” he says. “It’s important sometimes to get that frustration out, to celebrate, to do whatever, but just because you won last weekend or just because you lost last weekend doesn’t mean that the same thing is going to happen this weekend.”
This season, only his third in F1, has been revelatory, marked by this even-handed approach and a ruthless consistent delivery that have brought him six wins and six podiums in 14 races. After a spin in the wet in the season-opener at Melbourne, an error promptly consigned to the dustbin of history by the Australian, Piastri has delivered with pretty much impeccable precision.
His race engineer, Tom Stallard, the former Olympic rowing silver medallist, has described him as notable for being both “calm and intense”. While the architect of McLaren’s success, team principal Andrea Stella, summed up his strengths after a dominant win in Bahrain earlier this season by aptly noting: “No hesitations, no inaccuracies, everything that was available he capitalised on.”
Piastri’s attitude might be considered somewhat cold-blooded. As a person, he is clearly anything but. However, the strategy is doubtless effective. It’s an approach sport psychologists would recognise but it seems one honed by circumstance as he single-handedly pursued his career having moved to the UK when he was 14. His father, Chris was with him for six months, before returning to Australia and after which Piastri looked after himself.
“There’s definitely been a lot of lessons through experiences, when you’ve been racing for 15 years now, there’s a lot of tough moments in there,” he says. “There’s obviously the challenges of just going racing but then there’s the challenges of moving from home. Learning how to navigate life alongside racing, being far away from your family and friends, which I’m sure has moulded me to some degree as well.
“I never had any dramatic life experiences in my childhood but even just little things of having to make decisions for yourself and problem-solve. Once I learned to control things I could control and not worry about everything else in life it probably naturally translated to racing.”
That was on display in Baku last year when Piastri gave a masterclass of driving control under enormous pressure. Having taken the lead from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, he then defended it for 30 laps as the Monegasque driver ducked and dived and all but hurled himself at the Australian’s gearbox. To no avail as Piastri took his second and still perhaps the best win of his career. His reaction to Stallard was a simple, unflustered exclamation of “Yes!” over the radio as he took the flag.
There is depth here too. Piastri is a thoughtful character and slowly considers a response when asked how he assesses himself and his approach. “There’s obviously all the work that goes on behind the scenes of how to actually drive a race car fast,” he says. “But an important thing is always kind of dissociating the results of a weekend from how I felt I performed.
“So there’s been races I’ve won this year or in my career that I would probably rank as worse performances than races I’ve finished fourth or fifth. Just getting myself in the right mindset, essentially being quite calm, quite relaxed is what I think I need.”
Comparisons then have unsurprisingly been made between Piastri and Alain Prost – “The Professor” – and they are valid on many levels. The Australian is as measured a perfectionist on track in the mould of the four-time champion Frenchman and with a similarly calculating and considered air. Ten race meetings remain in the run-in, each of which could be vital in the title fight and much as Piastri knows it, he remains unconcerned.
“There is going to naturally be tension,” he says. “There’s naturally going to be pressure and emotions from that but it doesn’t necessarily weigh heavily on me. I’m honestly just more excited. If I was not in a championship fight, I’d be trying to attack things the same way. Obviously the tension around the position we’re in is naturally going to be higher but I’d be trying to do the same thing regardless of where I am in the championship.”
That there is more to the young man than an iron will over his emotions, however, is also clear by Piastri’s popularity. His laid-back public persona is engaging and likable and has struck a chord with F1’s new generation of young, enthusiastic fans, a demographic in which Norris too shares a similar popularity. One of them will be champion and the pair have, unusually, remained friendly even as they are going head to head this season. But will it last?
“There’s obviously going to be tension at points, ultimately we’re fighting for something that we’ve both dreamed of since we were kids,” says Piastri. “But our relationship is honestly probably stronger than it has been from the start. There’s obviously going to be a loser to this championship and that’s going to be not that pleasant for whoever that is but however this championship goes it’s been a good fight already and I think there’ll be a lot of respect both ways.”
No exaggerated theatrics then, simply a very reasonable kid, being eminently reasonable. Which is Piastri writ large. There will not be histrionics in what is likely to be a nail-biting contest but rather the poker-face of a player at ease with himself amid the maelstrom of a hopefully memorable title fight.
