Oscar Piastri’s first Formula 1 win in his debut season puts him in the same league as some former F1 champions and has set him on a potential collision course with teammate Lando Norris in the coming season.
Piastri enjoyed the strongest weekend of his rookie season at the Qatar Grand Prix, winning the sprint race from pole position and finishing a career-best second in the grand prix behind champion Max Verstappen.
It comfortably eclipsed his previous high watermark at the soaking-wet Belgian Grand Prix, where he qualified and finished second in the sprint before being crashed out of the grand prix by Carlos Sainz on the opening lap.
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His Sunday podium was his second consecutive appearance on the rostrum, backing up his maiden podium at the preceding Japanese Grand Prix two weeks earlier.
Fox Sports podcast Pit Talk co-host Mat Coch said Piastri’s first win and escalating rookie performances put him in an elite class of drivers.
“He’s done 17 races in his entire career at this point and he’s just driving at a phenomenal level at the moment,” Coch said. “And he’s still learning. He hasn’t reached his full potential yet and he’s already on par with Lando Norris.
“This is exceptional. In the sprint he had to fight for that. He lost position. He had to repass. He had to manage his pace and then fend off the advances of the world champion elect in the final laps there and he didn’t put a foot wrong.
“Perhaps the only other one that springs to mind is Jacques Villeneuve in 1996, when he came into a genuinely world championship winning car and almost won his maiden grand prix.
“Lewis Hamilton as well obviously — I can’t forget Lewis.
“There haven’t been too many rookies who’ve come in and been immediately successful the way that Oscar is proving to be.
“It goes to show that it doesn’t matter what team you’re driving for, if you have that innate ability, it shows through, and Oscar’s demonstrating that.
“It was his most complete weekend by some margin. He built up in practice. He delivered in the shootout … and then he won the definitely-not-a-grand-prix.”
PIT TALK PODCAST: Oscar Piastri wins his first f1 race in the Qatar sprint and backs up with a career-best second in the grand prix for the most complete weekend of his career. Max Verstappen finally makes official his third world title, but his triumphant weekend is overshadowed by extreme heat bringing driver health to the fore.
Coch added that Piastri’s rate of progress pointed to a higher ceiling of performance than even his trio of junior championship might have suggested.
“I’m really excited to see where the next five years take him, because he’s already so close to the complete package,” he said.
“How complete is that going to be? We’ve got Max Verstappen, who’s a generational talent, potentially about to face off — it’s a big call on my part — against another generational talent [in Piastri]. That’s my hot take.
“That’s an extraordinary position. Not now, but let’s wait a couple of years time; we could have two properly talented drivers absolutely ding-donging it out for race wins and championships.
“This is sort of the Senna-Prost stuff at McLaren and Ferrari, those sorts of battles. The Hunt and Lauda stuff — although Hunt wasn’t really a great, like Max is; I think Max’s already better.
“It’s those sort of battles — Häkkinen and Schumacher — that we’re on the precipice of looking at, and that’s what I think we can read out of the Qatar weekend, because … I think a lot of drivers would have at least run wide or made a mistake and opened the door for an opportunity, and he didn’t. It’s brilliant.”
Piastri speechless after ‘stressful’ win | 01:10
Pit Talk host Michael Lamonato said that put Piastri’s trajectory in direct conflict with Lando Norris, who has been the de facto team leader since dispatching Daniel Ricciardo in their first season together in 2021.
Norris is highly rated in the paddock and is regularly linked to possible moves to other top teams if McLaren doesn’t continue improving. Red Bull Racing had conversations about moving him to Milton Keynes, but each time the Briton extended his stay at Woking.
But Piastri’s growing strength could put a dent in Norris’s pulling power in the paddock as well as his status at McLaren in coming years.
“The step Oscar takes from this year to next will be really important in that story,” Lamonato said. “Then it’s a matter of him having less to lose than Lando does in this situation.
“There’s no one in the paddock who doubts [Norris’s] speed or his racecraft. There’s the question about whether or not he can close out a championship — simply because he’s not been in that situation to prove otherwise — or maybe even a win.
“But if he’s beaten next year in a more competitive fight where McLaren is more regularly in the podium positions, people won’t think less of his speed but he will become a second-order driver — a driver that’s suddenly not the guy you’re going to go and pay absolute top dollar for or make absolutely necessarily your number one driver if you’re one of the top teams — because he’s been beaten by a driver who is potentially in that really top class of drivers.
“There’s a lot at risk for Lando if he were to be beaten consistently by Oscar, and I think that’s where the tension’s going to come.
“It’s an interesting moment and could be a crossroads for his career.
“It’s all completely speculative at this point, but it does just set us up really nicely.”