[Auto] Meet Oscar Piastri, Alpine's new reserve driver looking to go one better than Leclerc and Russell

[S e u o n g]

Adding to his arsenal
Consistency has been the hallmark of Piastri’s junior career, and that’s been carried over into F2 this year, where the Alpine Academy racer leads the drivers’s standings with two rounds remaining.

Finishing inside of the top five in 11 out of 17 races so far this season, Piastri has missed out on the points just three times. He's also finished on the podium in five out of six feature races (where you start in your qualifying position, as opposed to the two reverse grid sprint races) and has the highest average finishing position of the grid.

His consistency of him is a characteristic that should appeal to those in F1 keeping a watching brief on the young Australian. The 20-year-old is also extremely calm - you’ll struggle to find any examples of him losing his temper over team radio.

“I thought that I could challenge for race wins, but I probably wasn't expecting to be so consistently at the front,” says Piastri on the current campaign. "Consistency is something that I’ve had as a trait throughout my career, and I was expecting to be consistent in my results this year - but maybe a bit lower down!"

After struggling last season, Piastri has now added qualifying pace to his toolbox too, following some extensive work on that area during a test at Barcelona. Having never qualified first in F3, he's now part of an exclusive club of drivers to have taken a hat-trick of poles in F2, alongside Leclerc, Russell and Alex Albon.

 

 

“It would be silly if I wasn't coming in and trying to get that third title,” Oscar Piastri says matter-of-factly.

The Australian has recently been announced as the Alpine F1 team 's reserve driver for 2022, but his immediate focus on him is on achieving a feat that even generational talents George Russell and Charles Leclerc weren't able to on their way up the junior ladder.

But what separates Piastri from the pair on paper is his 2019 Formula Renault Eurocup crown. Neither Russell nor Leclerc had won a title in the season prior to winning GP3, with Piastri now in with a chance of pulling off a hat-trick.

So who is Oscar Piastri, and how did he get here?

An unconventional route to racing
The PREMA driver’s route to racing started a little differently to most. Ultimately, he ended up following a pretty conventional path, which included various karting championships, as well as two single-seater titles - in Formula Renault Eurocup and Formula 3. But initially, he began by racing on a much smaller scale, with remote control cars - not just for fun, but competitively.

"There is no age limit or age groups," Piastri explains. “There is basically the top class and then the second class. I won the second class when I was nine, which was pretty cool. That was the highlight of my RC career, but I definitely raced them competitively - it wasn't just around the backyard. I think when I won the national championship, the next youngest competitor was 17 - it’s a very broad range of ages.

“Me and my dad were talking about it [as a potential career] and we did think about doing it, but trying to travel the world at the age of nine or 10, even with my dad, would have involved a lot of risks and uncertainties. "

 

 

 

LINK: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.meet-oscar-piastri-alpines-new-reserve-driver-looking-to-go-one-better-than.DpuMQUVfwdBCeS5koxRaz.html