"I'm glad it looks easy. Because it's not been easy, that's for sure," says Oscar Piastri, taking a break from the Austin heat as he prepares for the United States Grand Prix.
It’s been an incredible maiden run for the 22-year-old Aussie. There’s a generally understood principle that drivers take a season or two to bed into Formula 1. They need time to establish relationships with their teams, understand new tactics, and most importantly, get a feel for the car, which is a considerable step up from those of F2 where most, including Piastri, have come from. But if that’s the rule of thumb, Piastri is a clear exception. He’s graced the podium twice already, once beating his more experienced teammate to a second place finish and he’s racked up more points than seasoned drivers Valtteri Bottas, Alex Albon and Esteban Ocon have combined. Not only that, he’s made it seem like light work.
‘He’s very zen,’ I was warned, before sitting down to talk with McLaren’s breakout star, which made me worry that he might not be hugely forthcoming. But much like the widely-held assumption that he wouldn’t perform in his first year, this turned out to be wrong, too. "It's a really big jump, in a lot of aspects," he says of the move from F2, "I guess a lot of what people see is the difference in cars, lap times and the race being twice as long, but there’s everything else that comes with it too. The media attention, the sponsors and partner commitments. In junior motorsport, it’s a lot more about just turning up at the weekend and racing, whereas in Formula 1, it’s a much bigger job, even when we’re not on the track."
The job is indeed bigger and so is the audience, which has its own complications for the athletes that find themselves on the front lines of racing. At any Grand Prix event, you might discover the grandstands packed with up to half a million spectators. The global audience for Formula 1’s live television broadcasts stands at about 445 million. And add to that the burgeoning viewership of Netflix’s fly-on-the-wall F1 documentary Drive to Survive and you’ve got at least another 6.8 million people, all with allegiances, opinions and lofty expectations. "It really hit me in Melbourne, at my third Formula 1 race," he says, "during the drivers’ parade I realised just how many people were there watching. Even during the race sometimes, if there’s a quieter period, I notice it. We’ve got a lot of people invested in us, and that’s very important to recognise".
And with the Netflix crew following them around the clock, it could feel like those millions of invested people have a little bit too much access. When it comes to guarding his own privacy, he’s not particularly fastidious. "I just recently watched the Beckham documentary and my life is certainly nothing like that at the moment. And I’d be very, very surprised if it does get to that," Piastri tells me. "I’m not at that level. It’s not been too crazy." However, there are others he spares a thought for: "I think about my friends and family. A few of them don’t mind it, but for some of them it brings a lot of attention that they weren’t expecting."
Speaking of less favourable attention, one of the weirdest quirks of professional racing, especially in F1, is that the other driver on your team is usually positioned as your biggest rival. Piastri acknowledges that it's often the first point of reference for fans. "You’re the only two people on the grid with the same car, so you’re always compared very heavily to your teammate."
It’s a gruelling comparison to have to endure and it has ignited some fiery feuds over the years. Checo Perez and Ocon clashed so much during their stint at Force India that it led to several on-track crashes. McLaren veterans Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna’s rivalry remains one of the greatest in the sport’s history. Even Lewis Hamilton and Bottas, who by and large worked extremely well together under the Mercedes banner, had vicious disagreements sometimes. For a rookie like Piastri, landing a spot next to fan-favourite Lando Norris must have been a daunting prospect. But if it was, it’s a hurdle Piastri was determined to clear with some grace, finding a way to put the team first and establish the sort of camaraderie that might fend off the gossip columns. "We both agree that it’s far more important to be helping the team," he insists. "I guess a blunt way of putting it is that there's no point battling each other and arguing and fighting for 15th place."
More than agreeing to co-exist peacefully with Norris, the pair have worked hard at finding common ground, building a friendship off the circuit. "I think, just as people, we get on. We’re really working well together, we see each other quite a bit away from the track."
The F1 season is incredibly long and the Australian only manages to get back home to see his relatives for about three weeks each year. So apart from Norris, Piastri relies on a couple of other close relationships to see him through. He has nine-time Grand Prix winner Mark Webber and his wife Ann Neal in his corner as mentors. They helped guide him through a tricky period last year when a ‘breakdown in trust’ led to his quitting the Alpine team to go to McLaren. He sees their hindsight as his foresight. "I trust everything that they say. And then also my girlfriend. She’s a very important one to add to this list. I see her all the time and she supports me a lot, so telling her about my contract extension was so exciting."
Living in the pressure cooker atmosphere of F1, you might expect the young man to have lost some of that aforementioned zen. And although he gives great thought to the expectations that are placed on him, and to the people that are always watching to see if he’ll succeed or fail, at his core, he’s still just a boy who can't quite believe his luck. "You know, when you do a really good qualifying lap,’" he smiles, "It’s a minute and a half of being on the absolute limit. You can’t make mistakes and you’re at your peak performance… It’s the biggest rush."
Natasha Bird is the Former Executive Editor (Digital) of ELLE.
