F1: McLaren team boss Andrea Stella explains special traits that set Oscar Piastri apart
Oscar Piastri is one of the hottest prospects in Formula 1 and is only getting better. McLaren team boss Andrea Stella reveals to MAT COCH what makes the Australian star so special.
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Oscar Piastri is one of the hottest prospects in Formula 1 and is only getting better.
The young Australian has quickly marked himself as a future superstar, building on a junior career that was more successful than Lewis Hamilton.
And, according to McLaren team boss Andrea Stella, he’s only getting better.
An ex-engineer who has worked with Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso, Stella has first-hand insight into what separates the merely good from the truly remarkable.
Of Piastri, he speaks of continued a “development gradient” or, in layman’s terms, how rapidly he is learning and developing as a driver.
Formula 1 is the pinnacle of world motorsport, its drivers among the best in the world. Typically, they’ve been racing since childhood, progressing through karting into the junior formulae on their way to F1.
After karting, Piastri moved into Formula 4, Formula Renault (winning in 2019), Formula 3 (winning in 2020) and Formula 2 (winning in 2021). It was a meteoric rise, his three successive titles leaving him with a junior career better than the likes of even Hamilton.
And while that is a strong indicator of talent and potential, a driver graduating to Formula 1 is far from the complete article. There are nuances in competing at the top that can only be learned in the white heat of F1 competition.
It’s that journey Piastri is on, with Stella impressed by the 23-year-old’s progress.
“I’m very impressed with the gradient,” Stella told Speedcafe in an exclusive interview.
“In terms of how steep it is, I would have never considered, in fairness, that this would plateau for a few reasons.”
Stella is a pragmatist. The Italian took over as team principal at McLaren for the start of 2023 and has been instrumental in transforming it from a midfield operation to a genuine front-runner. Rational, logical and articulate, he has thrived since stepping into the job.
His opinions are carefully considered and based on fact rather than speculation. He doesn’t do guesswork; he doesn’t need to.
“One reason is the underlying talent,” he said of why he believes Piastri continues to improve.
“The underlying talent means that the more you grow, the more the talent allows you to see what’s the next step and grab it. But you won’t be able to grab and see the next step if you don’t put the mindset and the approach and the collaboration with your engineers so that you can elaborate, ‘Okay, what is the next step we need?’
“From this point of view, Oscar is a very gifted individual and a very gifted driver because I think, in addition to the talent, he owns the work ethos, if you say it like this, he has the humility to say like ‘I’m good, I’m a pretty special individual, but I need to keep going every day’.”
Since joining the F1 grid at the start of last season, Piastri quickly developed a reputation for building into a grand prix weekend, starting slowly and only taking risks when necessary.
For a young driver, this mature approach quickly won him admirers not just in the team, because he didn’t tear up machinery, but in the paddock more broadly.
Out of the car, he was relaxed and unflappable despite the intense interest in his arrival.
Piastri’s entry into F1 wasn’t straightforward. Part of the Alpine junior programme courtesy of winning Formula Renault in 2019, he was overlooked for a race drive in 2022 in favour of Fernando Alonso.
The young Aussie, who is managed by F1 race winner and world endurance champion Mark Webber, then became embroiled in a bitter fight for his services after signing for McLaren.
As it panned out, incompetence at Alpine had left Piastri a free agent and he duly signed to replace countryman Daniel Ricciardo at McLaren for 2023.
He quickly made an impact, picking up his first F1 podium at the Japanese Grand
Prix in his rookie season, backing that up in Qatar next time out – a weekend at
which he became an F1 winner after taking the flag in the Sprint.
This year, he’s twice qualified on the front row (though a penalty at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix meant he started fifth) and was second to Charles Leclerc in Monaco, the most demanding race in F1.
That run followed a strong result in Miami, where teammate Lando Norris won the race but Piastri harried early-leader Max Verstappen before a poorly timed Safety Car cruelled his own chances of victory.
Piastri’s growth has been mirrored by the development of McLaren under Stella, whose success owes much to his ability to lead and inspire those who work for him, traits the 53-year-old can see in Piastri, too.
“He definitely promotes the collaboration with the people around him,” he observed. “For a driver, if you want to get better and better, you do need elements supplied by the people around you, because you don’t have every solution. I think he has this toolbox of what is required to keep growing every day.”
But while talent and a desire to improve are admirable, and necessary qualities, they’re not enough in isolation, Stella warns.
“In Formula 1, like in all sports which are so competitive, it’s not enough to have one of these elements. You need to have them all because especially if you have talent, a lot of talent like he has, there’s a big risk that you think the talent is enough,” he said.
“Talent is not a fixed level, it increases every day. Like your ability increases every day. As soon as you think, ‘Oh, that’s enough, the car isn’t good enough,’ or, ‘My talent is enough, the team isn’t good enough,’ and you don’t want to work every day to keep improving, you are going to face a lot of disappointment.”
There are no such suggestions out of the Piastri camp with the consensus being that it’s a matter of when, not if, he becomes Australia’s next grand prix winner.
How much further he can go, based on Stella’s logic, is up to him.
You can read more F1 news from Mat Coch at Speedcafe
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