Oscar Piastri’s build-up to his first home grand prix was notable for how non-notable it was.
Despite the hype for his first Formula 1 race on Australian shores, Piastri kept media and public appearances to a bare minimum. He had the advantage too of having his family home nearby the circuit — just 15 or so minutes from Albert Park — to keep him grounded.
It was a deliberate strategy to ensure when he sat on the Albert Park grid on Sunday afternoon, it felt like any other race.
“Certainly we’ll have to make sure that he can stay focused on racing and stay focused on keeping up with this exceptional rate of development session after session,” McLaren principal Andrea Stella said ahead of the weekend, per Autosport.
“He is a very calm guy. I think he will be able to keep himself in the bubble.”
Every athlete will deal differently with competing at home, in front of passionate and partisan crowds. Most absorb the energy and turn it into momentum, but it’s crucial that they don’t put in more than they can get out.
Even the famously outgoing Daniel Ricciardo struggled to strike the right balance.
After the 2019 Australian Grand Prix, when he ran off track and broke his car before even reaching the first corner, he admitted that his flat-out home-race schedule had left him drained before even getting onto the grid.
He vowed to keep more of himself to himself for future races. He got only one more home race thanks to the pandemic, but it was one of his best results in a difficult final season with McLaren.
Piastri and his team will undoubtedly have learnt from observing Ricciardo’s experience, taking into account too that Formula 1 has become considerably more popular since 2019, with Piastri making his F1 debut with an already large profile.
So the 21-year-old kept his head down at home, and by the end of Sunday night, while the debris of rival cars was still being picked out of the grass and opposition teams were counting the cost of damage, he had his first career F1 points. The strategy had worked beautifully.
“I’m definitely happy to get my first points on the board, especially here at home,” he said. “It was a crazy race. I think it was the first race I’ve had with three red flags — I think it’s probably most people’s first race like that — but we kept ourselves out of trouble and ended up in the points at the end, which is great.”
POINTS EARNED, NOT WON
Of course circumstance had a role to play in the Australian collecting four points for eighth place, with the decision to resume racing with a standing start on lap 57 of 58 generating the carnage that promoted him from 11th before the suspension.
But any attempt to liken this to some kind of Stephen Bradbury-style achievement is deeply misguided.
Piastri’s first points are down directly to the off-track approach that served him so well in the lead-up to the weekend and an attitude that has come to define this very early stage of his career. Put simply, he has an exceptionally cool head on his young shoulders.
While so many other drivers lost their minds at the start of what looked like a two-lap sprint to the flag, Piastri played his cards just right to keep his nose clean and survive the carnage of the first turn.
That’s easier said than done. After all, the season’s two other rookies ended up beached in the gravel trap, never mind the mistakes of far more experienced drivers.
There’s also an element of things going around coming back around for the Aussie and his McLaren team. While the MCL60 is far from where it should be, it’s also fair to say that bad luck has hampered the drivers’ attempts to do it justice.
After technical problems in Bahrain and damage in Saudi Arabia, you can hardly say McLaren wasn’t due for a bit of good luck. Sometimes that’s just how motor racing rolls.
“The first two races really couldn’t have gone much worse, I would say, for the team,” Piastri agreed. “Obviously Bahrain we both had our issues and in Saudi the contact wiped out both of us, so it was nice to be on the good end of things going wrong for other people.”
PIASTRI’S PROGRESS CONTINUES
Of course the weekend wasn’t perfect for Piastri. While he was competitive, Lando Norris had him covered all weekend, even if only marginally — unsurprising given the MCL60 is the latest in a line of difficult-to-drive cars that his teammate has already learnt to get the most out of.
The deficit in qualifying was down to a single mistake in one corner in the tricky cool conditions. He was directly behind Norris early in the race, but his duel with renowned defender Yuki Tsunoda cut him off from his teammate and ultimately the top 10 before the final red flags.
When he eventually got past the AlphaTauri, he was too far adrift of the cars ahead to close the gap, and he settled into a rhythm that eventually brought the points to him.
“I think the first start, the first lap, was pretty good,” he said. “Then the middle of the race I just got stuck behind Yuki a bit too long.
“I just couldn’t really find a way past. I was trying a few different things with the battery to try and use it in the right place and stuff, but there are some things I can work on there definitely.
“I think once we got past, the pace seemed to be pretty good.
“I think for me there’s still some learning to do on how to use the battery most effectively to overtake. But I got a lot of practice today!”
Really that’s all to be expected just three races into his career, but that mindset geared towards constant improvement is what McLaren is finding so impressive from the Australian. It’s not just that he’s clearly naturally talented, but he’s also acutely aware of what he needs to work on, and the progress is evident session by session.
His lessons from Australia will have been filed away, ready to be used as soon as the next race in Azerbaijan.
But even in terms of pure pace the signs are positive despite the learning curve. Norris himself is picking up tricks from the newcomer rather than leading the team on his own, as was often the case during Ricciardo’s struggles at Woking.
“Certainly what we see is that Oscar is close to Lando in most of the corners … which gives references to Lando himself,” Stella said at the weekend. “I think when your teammate is so competitive, then it becomes a reference for you and you take advantage, like Lando is doing.
“I would say this year the closeness between the two drivers is certainly much better than what we saw last year.”
Even Norris agreed that he was being kept on his toes by his new teammate.
“He’s done a very good job,” he said. “He did a very good job in Saudi — he got into Q3, our only Q3 this year so far.
“I think from the second side, which is feedback and everything, our comments are probably a little bit more in line than they have been in previous years.
“It’s a better dynamic for keeping the focus for the engineers, the aerodynamicists, the rest of the team back at the MTC.
“From both sides, the off track and the on track — good stuff.”
There were concerns ahead of the Australian Grand Prix that Piastri wouldn’t be in a position to show his best self at his home race given the state of his car. But with conditions clicking in his favour, he got a just reward for his efforts.
When he returns next year, he’ll be an exponentially better drivers for the decisions he’s making this season.
