Mark Webber backs ‘guy next door’ Oscar Piastri to nail 5000 decisions and break the curse of Albert Park

Eye of newt and toe of frog - there’s been no homegrown winner of the Australian Grand Prix in 45 years. Mark Webber was among the victims of the curse of Albert Park, but he’s backing the nation’s rising star to finally break it.

Oscar Piastri with manager and former F1 driver Mark Webber.

The joint’s cursed. Oscar Piastri’s best hope might be to ride a broom and invoke wizardry. Quote Harry Potter to the McLaren garage: “I solemnly swear I am up to no good.” Wave an orange wand on the grid and shout, “Wingardium leviosa!”

Australia’s hoodoo at the Australian Grand Prix has lingered 45 years. Even an out-and-out, elbows-out racer like Mark Webber couldn’t make the podium. He won nine Grands Prix, saluting on the hallowed bitumens of Silverstone and Monaco, among other reputable establishments, and made 42 podiums worldwide, but on 12 straight occasions even this most accomplished and reputable of homegrown drivers fell victim to the decades-long hex on Australia that confronts Piastri on Sunday.

“It’s a brutal thing to admit but your home Grand Prix just seems so hard to win,” Webber says. “It’s a funny thing. Look at (English world champion) Jenson Button and I. I never won this race but I won the British GP twice. Jenson won this race but he never won the British. He told me, ‘Mate, I never had a good result in Britain.’ I said to him, ‘Mate, I never really had a bad one. If only we could swap them over.’ You’re desperate to do your best at home but it doesn’t always work out. Oscar’s goal is to win races but lets not forget a podium will be a monumental achievement. Australia hasn’t been on the podium here in a long, long time. It’ll be special if it happens.”

Eye of newt and toe of frog - there’s been no homegrown winner of the Australian GP since Alan Jones in 1980. No podium finish since John Smith in 1983. John Smith, eh? I reckon they’ve made that up. Who was third? Jane Doe? Daniel Ricciardo was second across the line to Nico Rosberg in 2014, only to be disqualified for drinking too much Red Bull, or exceeding the maximum allowed fuel flow, or both.

Wool of bat and tongue of dog - since the great, grunting, growling race moved to Albert Park in 1996, there hasn’t been a single podium appearance for Australia after Ricciardo’s appearance on the podium was deemed not a podium appearance at all. Hence the need for a dose of wingardium leviosa.

Webber, this giant of Australian motorsport, is Piastri’s manager and a mentor. He likens the history of Australian drivers crashing and burning, so to speak, at Albert Park to Australian tennis players finding double double toil and trouble while trying to win their home major at Melbourne Park. Pat Cash, Pat Rafter, Lleyton Hewitt and Sam Stosur won slams overseas before falling short at home as if they were being followed by a thousand miserly black cats.

“You come home to do your best but there’s so many variables for Oscar,” Webber says. “It’s the first race of the year. All the teams will be a bit rusty. That’s just the way it is, and the way you are as a driver. You learn a lot at the first event. Oscar could be exposed by that rustiness or he might benefit from the rustiness in another team. Clearly, though, McLaren know what they’re doing. They’re in a strong position as the world-championship winning team. When Oscar puts his helmet on, he knows his country is excited by the possibility he could do phenomenally well. You just never really how the first race of a year might go.”

Oscar Piastri meets fans at the 2024 Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park. Picture: Jason Edwards

Wingardium leviosa! I solemnly swear a rip-roaring race is on the cards. Four-time world champion Max Verstappen reckons his Red Bull cannot win. I’d call that bulls..t but I don’t want to be fined $60,000 for swearing. The 23-year-old Piastri, entering his third season in F1, is such a cool cat he may be unfazed by the history of black ones since the successes of Jones and the alleged John Smith.

“It’s incredibly early days in Oscar’s career but a lot has happened very quickly,” Webber says. “He’s had to absorb a lot of new experiences very fast. He’s very mature but Oscar is all about doing his talking on the track. He’s a natural born-competitor. You could say he’s reserved off the track but he’s serious about his profession. His life is changing but he’s being himself, which I really like in him. We all like that about Oscar. He’s a little bit the guy next door – with big goals.”

Webber adds: “Oscar has presence. You’ve seen all the different characters in Formula One and all the different elite sportspeople, and you know they all come out of the can in a different way. Oscar is who he is and he’s not going to pretend to be anyone else. That’s what I love about him and that’s why I think he’s endeared himself to the Australian public. He’s authentic and true to himself and that’s really refreshing.”

Ash Barty’s Australian Open tennis win in 2022 over American Danielle Collins – boo! – ended a 44-year wait for a homegrown women’s champion. It’s been 48 years since Mark Edmondson waved his wooden wand and ambushed John Newcombe for the men’s title. Piastri and Jack Doohan will be the Australians on the grid on Sunday. Forty-five years after Jones’ triumph, a Doohan victory for Alpine would be the biggest shock since, well, Edo beat Newk.

“When you talk to Ash and Lleyton and Alex de Minaur, we’re so transfixed on these phenomenal international sporting events when they come here,” Webber says. “They really are awesome and we should never trivialise the fact we have a GP and a tennis major in our country. I think we saw with Alex de Minaur this year the level our international sporting superstars need to operate at to win. It’s so high. And it’s such a small window of opportunity. As an Australian racing driver, you get to race at one once a year. That’s it. Oscar has only one opportunity against the elite of the elite. There will be at least 5000 decisions that go into having a good result. It won’t surprise me if he ends up being the one who gives Australia the result we’ve waited a long time for. But as I say, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the first race of the year.”

Piastri’s practice session is on Friday. Qualifying is Saturday. The main event is 3pm on Sunday. The whizkid/wizard won’t hear the heaving, howling crowd but he’ll see enough of it to know where he is. In a race that has been unspeakably unkind for decades to Australian drivers.

“The race starts and you can see the flags here, you can see flags there, all in your peripheral vision,” Webber says. “You definitely get a sense of the atmosphere. Optically you pick up some incredible sights. You don’t have the audio element of the crowd that other athletes get in their sports but you definitely feel the energy. When you’re threading yourself around that track in front of 120,000 people, you’re feeling it. That’s a beautiful thing about a race like this for a driver like Oscar.”