Oscar Piastri’s Basic Instinct

In less than 48 hours, Oscar Piastri will be racing along the neon-drenched Las Vegas Strip at speeds approaching 350 kilometres per hour. The Melbourne-born 23-year-old says this as nonchalantly as someone commenting on the weather, before querying if that’s even the quickest straight on the Formula 1 calendar.

The forces on the McLaren driver’s body as he approaches top speed will, he says, not be overly strong — “When you get towards that speed you’re barely accelerating because of the drag, so you actually don’t have that many forces acting on you” — although such are the aerodynamics of an F1 car that the faster he drives, the higher the downforce pushing his car closer to the ground and therefore increasing its grip, meaning if it’s a bumpy track “it can be a bit nasty.”

The most physically demanding aspect of being in the car is, he explains, the corners and the braking. “[That’s] where we feel it the most compared to the straights. If you’re braking then it’s trying to send you out the front of the car; if you’re turning right your body wants to go left, and vice versa. It depends a bit on the scenario. In terms of the magnitude, the acceleration we have out of a corner is maybe 1G, or maybe a little bit more, but braking can be over 5 Gs.”

To put that into context, an astronaut taking off on the space shuttle is subjected to around 3G of acceleration. What’s more, that take-off lasts only a few minutes — the average Formula 1 race can go for around 90. Remarkably, the physical demands this places on the body aren’t the toughest thing to overcome following a Sunday afternoon race.

“For me, the adrenaline on a Sunday night is still pretty strong; I always find sleeping on Sunday night pretty tough,” he admits. “But in terms of the physical toll, in terms of stiffness and fatigue, it depends on the race. But normally a day or two later you feel back to normal.”

At 8pm on this chilly Tuesday night in Las Vegas, Piastri is days away from competing in the 22nd Formula 1 race of the year, the third last on the 2024 F1 calendar. With 24 races in 21 countries across five continents, it’s the longest season in F1 history, a reflection of the increased demand for the sport around the world.

Much of that demand is due to Netflix’s Drive to Survive, a documentary series that, since 2019, has offered fans fly-on-the-wall access to the drivers, team bosses, intra-team squabbling and high drama that goes hand in hand with the travelling circus that is Formula 1. In Season 5, imposing Mercedes team principal and CEO Toto Wolff remarked that the show is “more close to Top Gun than a documentary,” but for Liberty Media, the powerful American owners of Formula 1 that commissioned the series, it has unequivocally achieved its goal of broadening the sport’s appeal. Piastri claims not to watch it.

“Actually, I lie,” he smiles. “I watched the McLaren episode, more just to see what the story was like and a little bit of how I was portrayed. I obviously know what happened in the year, so it’s more just to double check and see what kind of story’s been painted. But all the other episodes about everything else, no, I don’t watch.”

Piastri’s portrayal in the series is, so far, true to the character currently staring down a Zoom call from a non-descript Las Vegas hotel room. Dressed in the McLaren team uniform of papaya-coloured polo shirt and McLaren cap, he is polite, thoughtful, attentive and, it has been noted by commentators, laid-back to the point of appearing unemotional.

That characterisation has gained trajectory over the course of his time in F1, due in part to the unflustered and deadpan nature of his radio communication with race engineer Tom Stallard, regularly broadcast on the TV coverage. When he won his second race of 2024 (and his F1 career) in Baku in September, he simply hissed a triumphant “yes.” Other drivers, such as Mercedes’ George Russell, have been known to celebrate a win by howling and excitedly shouting catchphrases like “Yabba dabba doo,” which, to be fair, is more befitting such a moment than Piastri’s reserved missive. Or perhaps that’s just the impression he wants to give the world.

“I’ve never really been the most expressive over the radio, but in that one, basically for 10 seconds before [saying ‘yes’] I’d been screaming to myself, and I was really, really happy. I didn’t say it on the radio though ’cause I think there were still two cars that were crashed and there were yellow flags, so my engineer was warning me about that. I didn’t want to shout over the top of him while he was trying to tell me useful stuff, but if I had opened the radio I think people would have understood a bit more that I do get emotional on the radio sometimes. That was really special and was probably the best win and the best race of my career. That one’s going to be very hard to beat.”

BORN IN Melbourne on April 6th, 2001, and raised in the south-east suburb of Brighton, cars have always played a substantial role in Oscar Jack Piastri’s life. Both his grandfathers were mechanics, while his dad, Chris, co-founded automotive hardware and software development company HP Tuners. One of Piastri’s favourite movies as a child was — you guessed it — Cars; speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald in 2021, Chris remarked that bedtime stories usually consisted of automotive books.

When Piastri was around six, his dad returned from a business trip with a remote control car for his son. His love of racing it around the backyard progressed to finding a remote control racing club — his skill was such that he would soon go on to compete at a national level.

A friend at the club asked if Piastri would like to try his hand at go-karts, the motorsport entry point for every modern F1 driver. “I had a go,” he smiles, “and next week I had my own.”

Piastri quickly established a reputation as a talented go-kart racer, coming second in the 2014 Australian National Sprint Kart Championship (Junior Clubman Class) and third in the 2015 Australian Kart Championship, KF3 class. At the age of 14 he said goodbye to his friends and family in Melbourne and, with his dad, moved to Hertford in England to pursue racing more seriously, signing with Ricky Flynn Motorsport (the same outfit that took his current teammate at McLaren, Lando Norris, to numerous karting titles).

When Chris opted to return home six months later, Piastri was faced with a decision: go home with his dad or stay in England and attend boarding school so he could continue to race throughout Europe. Piastri chose the latter.

Ask him if he had to grow up quickly and he pauses, buying time with a long, “Uuuuuuhhhhh…”

“Yeah, pretty quickly,” he finally offers. “Being at boarding school made things easier I would say, because one, I didn’t have to cook for myself. I didn’t even have to do my own laundry. In terms of getting myself to races, yes, it takes a bit of organisation in terms of how you’re going to get to the airport, book your flights and stuff like that, but for me it became standard practice pretty quickly. I think even now I’m more comfortable going to an airport and flying across the world than I am getting to a train station and trying to get 10 miles down the road.

“But,” he continues, “you do have to learn… especially the emotional things of being by yourself or not having your parents there. Yes, they’re a phone call away, but it’s not quite the same. I think the emotional stuff I never struggled with massively, but there were definitely points where a hug every now and again would have been nice, or just being able to ask questions or advice. But I think being at boarding school helped with having a support system around me.”

Though his progress through the karting ranks was more solid than remarkable, the same can’t be said of his move into single-seater cars. After finishing as British Formula 4 vice-champion in 2017, in 2019 he began a rapid ascent through the junior formula divisions, becoming the first driver to win Formula Renault, Formula 3 and Formula 2 in consecutive years.

That success was rewarded with a Reserve Driver’s seat with French Formula 1 team Alpine, a hard-won foothold into earning a permanent racing seat. The downside was that he had to spend a year on the sidelines, focusing more on testing and race attendance than competing. The upside was that it gave him a close look at the media commitments and sponsor demands on drivers.

Such experiences couldn’t, however, prepare him for the reality of being a full-time Formula 1 driver, a goal he achieved when he signed with McLaren in late-2022. “I think the biggest [challenge] was how tiring the season would be,” he says of his maiden 2023 campaign. “Just how draining the season can be because of how busy you are and how much travelling you do. I think I went to 12 races in my Reserve Driver year. So then when you add in double the amount of races, you’re driving as well, a lot of the tracks being new [to me]… those were also tracks I probably struggled with a bit more. So there were compounding effects of a difficult weekend and then just tiring weekends.”

Despite a frustrating start —  he had to retire his car in his debut F1 race at the Bahrain Grand Prix due to technical issues — Piastri’s first year in Formula 1 was a success. After becoming the first rookie since seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton to achieve multiple podiums in his first year, not to mention winning the F1 Sprint in Qatar, Piastri finished the season in a very respectable ninth place.

2024 has exceeded expectations. Three weeks after this interview, as the season draws to a close in Abu Dhabi, Piastri will finish fourth in the World Drivers’ Championship, securing eight podiums, including two wins. Even more spectacular, McLaren will be crowned World Champions, winning their first Constructors’ Championship since 1998. This last point is remarkable given that when Piastri joined the British team, replacing fellow Australian Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren were routinely starting at the back of the grid, scrapping for minor points while outfits such as Mercedes and Red Bull competed for the podium positions.

McLaren have, in a very short space of time, gone from being the hunters to the hunted. “I’m pretty comfortable in that position,” says Piastri. “I’d much rather be where we are than where our competition is.”

Those with a deep understanding of the sport believe Piastri is future world champion material, thanks to the combination of his pace, skill, ability to learn quickly and unflappable nature. Ask him if that’s his goal moving into the 2025 season and he smiles.

“Let’s see what kind of car we have. Obviously if we’ve not got a car capable of competing for the championship then there’s not much point focusing on that, and it’s purely about trying to focus on getting the most out of the car. And then naturally if the car is quick and I’m doing a good job, hopefully the championship picture looks pretty good too. That’s definitely the goal going into it.

“I think there’s still, on a more immediate level, trying to improve some of the things that are going to make that goal possible, like improving my qualifying and little bits and pieces here and there, and bringing everything together. So those are the small goals I want to improve on and hopefully that makes the big picture look good. But the expectation is to be fighting for a championship, and if that’s the position we’re in, I want to make sure I can win it.”

FROM A spectator’s point of view, one of the more remarkable aspects of Formula 1 is just how chaotic the scene on the starting grid can be in the minutes leading up to a race. Celebrities and VIPs roam between the cars posing for selfies, DJs pump music at ear-shattering volume, and media stalk the space with TV cameras hoping for a last-minute quote. Amidst this barely controlled mayhem, the drivers can often be seen standing on the fringes, searching for quiet where it doesn’t exist, trying to focus on what’s to come while getting final instructions from their race engineers. In no other sport are athletes subjected to such an invasion of their space at such a crucial time in their preparation.

“I think for me it quickly becomes normal in a lot of ways,” says Piastri. “Especially the interviews and stuff like that — I feel like the answers we give to those questions are rarely very exciting. In a lot of ways you answer those questions without needing to think about them. And then you know you’re going to have your time from when the national anthem plays to getting in the car. From that point onwards there are no more interviews, there are no more celebrity meet and greets.”

Once the grid clears, Piastri is strapped into his car, his helmet visor goes down and, amidst the din of the roaring engines, there is finally peace. His attention moves to the five lights suspended over the front of the grid, which illuminate one by one until each is glowing red. The millisecond they’re extinguished, the race is on.

“When things are going well, there’s honestly nothing going through your head,” says Piastri of those final few seconds. “You are so much on autopilot and in an almost unconscious state that you’re purely focusing on the lights, and as soon as they go off, everything is an instinctive reaction. When things are at their best… you’re genuinely thinking of nothing.”

When, on March 16th, the 2025 Formula 1 season kicks off in Piastri’s hometown of Melbourne (although, like many drivers, he now lives in Monaco), there will be numerous storylines dominating the weekend. For starters, it will be Lewis Hamilton’s first race for Ferrari, having made the shock move to the Italian team after 12 years at Mercedes, where he won six of his seven World Drivers’ Championships. That move displaced Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz, who will be lining up for the first race of 2025 with the struggling Williams team. Then there will be the rookies on the grid, one of which will be Alpine driver Jack Doohan, the Australian son of Grand Prix motorcycle road racing world champion Mick.

Amongst it all will be Piastri, entering his third year in Formula 1 with the goal of securing his first ever World Drivers’ Championship. As he sits in his car, his engine roaring, the lights illuminating one by one, he will be hoping that there is nothing in his head, that he is operating on pure instinct. And then the lights will go out, and away he’ll go.

This article features in the March-May 2025 issue of Rolling Stone AU/NZ. If you’re eager to get your hands on it, then now is the time to sign up for a subscription.

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