Oscar Piastri, the rising of a star

It seems like yesterday when the whole Alpine and Piastri chaos blew up, but a month already passed and now the announcement is finally official. Oscar Piastri will be racing with Mclaren in 2023, leaving the Alpine seat empty after they announced him as their driver without his consent. But let’s leave this “drama” to the side and talk a bit about Piastri and his climb to F1.

Norris and Piastri: from kart to F1

As mentioned above Oscar will be racing with Mclaren alongside Lando Norris in 2023, but what do these two have in common apart from their young age and insane talent?

Both drivers back in the day used to race for Ricky Flynn Motorsport in International karting: Norris won the KF World championship in 2014 with them, while Piastri, who only started racing in Europe consistently in 2016, managed to get 6th place at the World Championship in Bahrain as his best result. At that time Piastri still hadn’t stood out, but you can never judge a book by its cover, right?

Piastri's early career in single seater

In 2017 he moved to British F4 with the team TRS Arden, securing a second place in the championship. Looking at the great results and having a good feeling with the team he moved up to Formula Renault Eurocup with them, where he managed to bring home a few podiums and an overall P8 in the championship in his rookie year. Not the brightest of seasons for him but surely one to learn from.

The following year Oscar decided to stay in the championship but changed team, teaming up with R-ace GP. That year, thanks to his previous experience in the championship and the top car the team provided him, he made his season one to remember: eleven podiums and eight wins secured him the championship and a place in the Renault, currently Alpine, Academy.

This was just the start of a brighter than ever future for the Aussie.

F2 and F3: rookie seasons and championships win

He debuted in FIA F3 in 2020 with Prema Racing, one of the most successful teams in the minor formulas. It was a bit of an up and down season, but he scored points consistently, with two very talented teammates: Frederik Vesti (Mercedes Junior) and Logan Sargeant (Williams Academy).

His strong opponents didn’t manage to take away the title from him though, making Oscar FIA F3 Champion in 2020 as a rookie. At this point Piastri’s name started to be on everyone’s lips: winning FIA F3 in your rookie year is surely something to be impressed by.

Following his amazing achievement he moved to FIA F2, again with Prema Racing team, where he joined the FDA driver Robert Shwartzman, at his second year in the category with the team. Piastri had a brilliant season, still with some bittersweet moments: a P19 in Bahrain and two retirements, Baku and Abu Dhabi;

Despite that, the eleven podiums and six wins crowened him FIA F2 Champion, once again as a rookie. Through his academy he had the chance to test a F1 car, starting to understand how everything in F1 worked and what could be awaiting him.

The relationship with Alpine

At this point Piastri really had proved himself, demonstrating that you don’t necessarily need to succeed in karting in order to be competitive in formulas as it’s often believed.

We could firmly define Oscar Piastri as a rising star, who worked his way up to be one of the most successful drivers in the minor formulas and a, soon to be, F1 driver.

Doubtlessly Alpine believed so too: the relationship between the pair seemed pretty strong as Piastri tested for them, did a lot of sim work, made few appearances in this year races but, you know what they say, “not all that glitters is gold”.

The drama: Vettel, Alonso and McLaren

Alpine apparently wanted to keep Fernando Alonso for another year, making it difficult for Oscar to make his F1 debut, but all suddenly changed when Sebastian Vettel announced his retirement at the end of the year.

Soon after that Alonso announced that he would switch to Aston Martin, leaving Alpine in a difficult situation. On the 2nd of August they announced that Piastri would make his F1 debut in 2023 with them. The excitement only lasted a few hours, until Oscar made a statement on Instagram saying he wouldn’t be racing for Alpine in 2023. At that point everyone was left speechless and confused: why would a F1 Team put out a false statement? Or why wasn’t Piastri racing for them?

From that moment a whole month went by and it left time for a lot of speculations: was he signing with Williams, McLaren, Haas, Alpha Tauri or with who? A few days ago Daniel Ricciardo announced that his contract with McLaren had come to an end and at that point everything started to make more sense.

Yesterday McLaren announced that Oscar would be racing for them in 2023, making the Norris-Piastri pair one of the youngest on the grid but also one amongst the youngest line ups in F1 history.

Haters will hate

All of this initial drama and the sudden end of Ricciardo’s contract brought a lot of hate to the young Aussie: fans started to accuse him of being a traitor to Alpine or stealing Daniel’s place.

This shows how opportunistic the motorsport world is: when you win, everyone is a fan of yours, but when you make a mistake or get involved in drama they won’t even think about it twice and hate on you. Every person that has come across Oscar’s path has stated how nice, kind, funny and a hard working person he is, even Ricciardo himself: the hate he’s now receiving is not deserved at all.

But anyway, the young star will have enough time next year to show what he’s worth of and leave everyone speechless as he’s already done previously.

We wish nothing but the best to him, a successful career in F1: who knows, he might be a future World Champion! Stay tuned to find out what the future holds for him.