Australia’s next F1 star Oscar Piastri: ‘I want to get there on merit, not buy a seat’

From a distance, it feels like Oscar Piastri was destined for the pinnacle of motor-racing. “My dad’s dad and my mum’s dad, my pop and my granddad, they were both mechanics,” the 20-year-old Australian says. “And my dad – his business is a car-tuning business. So I think it was naturally running in the family.”

When Piastri was six, his father Chris returned from a business trip with a remote-controlled monster truck. “I was just fanging around with that in the backyard,” he says. Remote control racing led to go-karting, which led to Formula Four, Three, Two and now, this year, a reserve driver spot with BWT Alpine in Formula One. “That [monster truck] led to the journey I have taken so far.”

But for all it may seem as if Piastri was preordained for motor-racing greatness, it has taken considerable sacrifice – and millions of dollars – for that goal to be within reach for the Melbourne-born driver. And despite winning the F3 and F2 championships in consecutive seasons, the Australian has not yet made it to the heights of F1.

“It has been an awesome run in the junior categories,” he says. “I think the results speak for themselves.” But in the cut-throat world of motor-racing, results alone are not enough. Ahead of the season opener next month, an F1 seat remains so near, yet so far for Piastri. The prospect of becoming the 18th Australian F1 driver in history, and joining compatriot Daniel Ricciardo on the grid, eludes him – for now.

The late afternoon sun shines on Piastri as he speaks over Zoom, from a backyard in Portsea on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, at the end of his summer break. A return to Europe beckons (he is based in Oxford, England) ahead of his first year globe-trotting with the international circus that