Nationality: Australian
Birthday: 6 April 2001
Current team: McLaren
Previous teams: None
Number: 81
Strengths: Awareness, smooth driving, overtakes rivals quickly
Weaknesses: Tyre management, late-season consistency
Strongest tracks: Saudi Arabia, Italy, China, Britain
Weakest tracks: United States, Mexico, Brazil
Statistics
Grand Prix wins: 9
Pole Positions: 6
Fastest laps: 9
Podiums: 26
World Championships: 0
F1 teammate record H2H
Total Q record: 23-48
Total R record: 23-47
| Team mate | Q record | R record |
| Norris (2023-25) | 23-48 | 23-47 |
Pre-F1 championship results
Won Formula 2 (2021)
Won Formula 3 (2020)
Won Formula Renault Eurocup (2019)
2nd in British F4 (2017)
Career analysis
Oscar Piastri had an incredible junior career that culminated in winning Formula 2 and Formula 3 in his first attempts. Sadly, he was not instantly promoted to F1 despite being part of Alpine’s academy. But in a hilarious manner, he rejected Alpine later when the French outfit did want to promote him and instead negotiated a contract with McLaren when an opening appeared.
This incredible foresight means that Piastri now finds himself in a top F1 team with the opportunity to win races and perhaps even championships.
He has struggled against Lando Norris when it comes to pure pace. For the first two years of Piastri’s career, Norris simply seemed quicker. But that was likely due to experience. At his third season in 2025, Piastri really caught up and was essentially neck-and-neck with Norris in terms of both qualifying pace and racecraft.
Sadly, Piastri had a bad streak towards the end of the year. His worst tracks all come in those final months of the calendar, so he will have to improve on those. It is unclear whether Piastri suffers more from jetlag than other drivers, as he seems to do great in Europe and the Middle East, but performs fairly poorly in the Americas.
Piastri’s strengths are his ability to keep cool under pressure, his awareness, starts, and wheel-to-wheel skills. He is also a fast driver – not quite as fast as Norris, but few are. If Piastri cannot beat Norris on pure speed, he may be able to beat him through better starts, handling pressure better, and simply improving over time. The Australian finished all the races in 2024 and is almost always in the running for good results. He is rarely involved in collisions and does not have any clear enemies in the paddock.
At the moment, Piastri ranks as a top 5 driver. If he takes another step forward in 2026 – getting the edge over Norris on pace, and improving his late-season consistency – then Piastri could be considered the third best driver on the grid, but let’s see if it comes to that.
