Formula One: The underrated skill that could make level-headed Oscar Piastri a World Champion

At just 23 years of age Oscar Piastri is displaying the type of composure that’s needed to be a Formula One World Champion.

Oscar Piastri displays the calmness of a future Formula One World Champion. Picture: Alex Pantling/Getty Images

Of all the virtues which Australian young gun Oscar Piastri has to succeed in Formula One, perhaps the most underrated is his patience.

While he’s being paid millions of dollars to drive his supercharged McLaren at frightening speeds, he’s also quickly figured out that his ability to remain composed when things go against him is just as vital as having a lead foot.

“I think you kind of learn that through experience,” he told this masthead in a recent sit-down interview at Monaco.

“There’s so many things that can go wrong that you can’t actually control.

“So you have to learn pretty quickly, either through a lot of hard work or just a lot of experience or both, that things are going to be painful at one point or another.”

Oscar Piastri has been tipped as a future world champion.

Just 23 and in only his second season in F1, it’s that disarming level-headed maturity that has experts everywhere predicting the Australian has all the tools and the temperament to be a future world champion.

Despite impressively winning two races and recording seven podium finishes this season, Piastri is a longshot to capture the 2024 driver’s title, currently sitting in fourth place on 237 points, 94 behind championship leader Max Verstappen, with six races to go.

After being forced to cool his jets for the last four weeks, Piastri will be back in the cockpit when the season resumes at this weekend’s United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas.

Oscar Piastri celebrates winning the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

With his British teammate Lando Norris holding out faint hope he can rein in Verstappen, Piastri is facing added pressure both from within and outside the confines of the McLaren garage, but appears to be taking it all in his stride.

“I’m a pretty relaxed person as it is, I would say,” he said.

“So I maybe don’t have to work at it as hard as some others.

“In terms of being patient in F1, it’s almost just kind of accepting that a lot of stuff is going to go wrong in your career.”

Piastri’s nonchalant attitude to winning and losing almost seems out of place in the high-octane world of F1, but not so.

Unfairly, he’s been branded aloof and even dull, but so have many other drivers who have gone on and won championships.

To those that know Piastri personally, he’s nothing of the sort, it’s just his laconic wit and appreciation of the fine margins between success and failure that will put him in good stead further down the road.

Piastri is inspired by the approach of Roger Federer.

“It’s the same as I guess a little bit like other sports,” Piastri said.

“I watched a speech by Roger Federer not that long ago and he was speaking about how even for himself, who is one of the most successful tennis players of all time, how much time he actually spent losing, how many points he lost in his career, how many sets?

“And it’s the same thing in motorsport really. You look at the top guys in motorsport, like Lewis (Hamilton), for example.

“His win rate is one in three so he spends two thirds of his time not winning.

“And he’s got probably the best record so you kind of learn along the way to accept a lot of hard times.”

Originally published as Formula One: The underrated skill that could make level-headed Oscar Piastri a World Champion