McLaren superstar Oscar Piastri stepped up when a family was struck by tragedy. He will race at Albert Park in the opening round of 2026

Oscar Piastri knew he had to have an uncomfortable conversation with himself. He also knew that returning to Australia wouldn’t make it any easier.

It was the end of the 2025 championship season and although Piastri led for most of the year, he fell behind and lost his first title to McLaren teammate Lando Norris.

It was a disappointing conclusion to an impressive championship campaign for the young Melburnian, who won seven races and came close to ending Australia’s 45-year drought without a Formula One champion.

Looking back, Piastri doesn’t think there was a specific moment when he sat back and analyzed where things went wrong. It was an accumulation of things that started with him thinking about things he was proud of. There were also discussions with McLaren about “how they could approach things better”.

These “conversations” likely refer to discussions about McLaren’s infamous papaya rules; This is a team strategy that sees both drivers treated equally and free to race each other.

The strategy kept things as fair as possible, but it arguably led to a number of problems. mistakesIncluding a clash between the two in Canada, a “change position” call in Italy and a double disqualification in Las Vegas.

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These setbacks, combined with Max Verstappen’s remarkable last-minute revival, put McLaren’s drivers’ championship in jeopardy.

“Some of these conversations are things you need to kind of calm things down. Sometimes you just talk about things and move on,” Piastri said this week.

“So I think it’s an important process. I also think with the people around me, my family, the support team around me… But again, it all happens when you feel it, rather than saying, ‘Okay, I’m back in Australia now, everything’s fine’.”

“No matter how much I wanted it to be that way, it wasn’t. So when it shows up, you deal with it and move on.”

This realistic reflection and down-to-earth nature is what Piastri is known for.

Born in Melbourne’s bayside suburbs, Piastri started go karting at Oakleigh Go Kart Racing Club under the mentorship of former go-kart champion James Sera.

Leanne Gurney, whose daughter Alana now races at Oakleigh, said Piastri remained a gold-star role model for racers in Melbourne.

“It’s great to see someone doing this for kids in Melbourne, it gives them something to be inspired by,” he said.

As his karting career developed, Piastri quickly rose through the junior ranks; He became the Formula Renault Eurocup champion in 2019, the Formula 3 champion in 2020 and the F2 champion in 2021.

Following a failed announcement from Alpine, Piastri moved to McLaren in 2023 to replace compatriot and fan favorite Daniel Ricciardo.

While Ricciardo is known for his big personality, joking with the media and grinning from ear to ear, Piastri has a quieter energy.

This was on display in the Australian summer when it appeared in TV ads for the Google Pixel, one of a series of commercial tie-ins that peaked during Grand Prix week.

According to Forbes, Piastri takes home an estimated $56 million in 2025; This amount included his $15 million salary, a $41 million bonus for finishing in the top three in the drivers’ championship, and his role in McLaren winning the constructors’ championship.

These figures have not been confirmed by Piastri or his team.

For a driver who has built a reputation for saying very little and letting the stopwatch do most of the talking, the Google Pixel ad was a piece of pointed theatre.

At home, Piastri is shown haphazardly rearranging the artwork on his wall. A mountain painting, a rather obvious reference to his former team Alpine, descends and a new piece dominated by the McLaren papaya ascends.

Piastri has rarely touched on the bitter contract saga that erupted when he left Alpine in 2022, but here he is quietly rewriting visual history on his own wall.

For a driver who generally avoids the spotlight, the ad comes across as both brash and deliberate. No interviews, no barbs, no rehashing the legal drama; just a subtle reminder that everything that once hung on that wall has been replaced.

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Access to Piastri and his family is tightly controlled by his management, led by former Formula One driver Mark Webber, who finished third in three championship races for both McLaren and Red Bull.

This week Piastri took to the stage for sponsors, offering reporters access for a few minutes at best as he munched on sausages outside a hardware giant in Port Melbourne or promoted an accessories manufacturer in Melbourne’s CBD. A small group of Australian journalists, including this one, were invited to a media roundtable with Piastri where he reflected on the 2025 season.

Ask anyone in Piastri’s circle to describe the 24-year-old and the same adjectives come up. Calm, modest, cool-headed.

In 2024, Oscar’s mother Nicole Piastri described the F1 star’s first-born of four children, who has three younger sisters, as “painfully immature”. “Like an old man in a young man’s body,” he said in this imprint at the time.

Piastri receives similar compliments from his fellow drivers regarding his mature character.

He and Frenchman Pierre Gasly of Alpine often spend time playing games together. Call of Duty is one of the favourites, which helps the duo break away from the pressures of Formula 1.

“I really appreciate him, he’s just very calm,” Gasly told this imprint.

“I think we are very different in terms of personality; I’m much more emotional, he’s much more calm and cool, and that’s probably why we get along so well. He’s an excellent driver.”

Piastri has plenty of motorsport figures in his corner. Australian F1 legend Alan Jones, who won the 1980 world championship with Williams, said Piastri was a “hugely talented guy”.

“Every once in a while someone comes along and they have the talent to win races and championships no matter what, and he looks like that. He’s one of those freaks – a freak in the best way possible – a naturally gifted driver. He’s not lacking in anything.”

F1 commentator David Croft, who attended the Kayo motorsport event on Monday night, predicted Piastri would be a championship contender this year as well.

“He has all the qualities required to be a good world champion and in his second and third seasons he has demonstrated the ability to learn and improve from his first year or the season before,” Croft said.

Australian Grand Prix Corporation chairman Martin Pakula believes the McLaren driver has become one of the most admired athletes this country has produced.

“What strikes me is that he is as universally loved by the Australian sporting public as any Australian athlete I can remember,” Pakula told this imprint at the back of the Albert Park paddock.

“Probably [alongside] Someone like Shane Warne. And maybe Pat Rafter sooner.

“You’ll rarely find anyone who has a bad word to say about him. I think it’s because he’s so humble, so talented and so sincere,” Pakula said.

Pakula watched Piastri closely, often in the tense hours before qualifying or races, when Formula One drivers retreat deep into their own heads.

What impressed him the most was the 24-year-old player’s composure.

“You see him in the paddock and his demeanor rarely changes. It doesn’t matter what’s going on around him.”

“For a young man in his early 20s to compete in this competition — and I mean actually compete with these guys — I think that’s an accomplishment that’s easy to underestimate.”

What makes Piastri’s popularity even more intriguing is that he seemingly goes against the stereotype of the charismatic Australian sports hero. Unlike the more expressive personalities of that past, Piastri is reserved and understated.

“I think Australians really care a lot about originality and I think they know it’s the real article,” Pakula said.

“Oscar is himself. He doesn’t pretend to be anyone else, and he earns people’s respect through pure talent and determination.”

Australian GP chief Travis Auld was impressed by Piastri’s resilience and integrity after losing the drivers’ title to Norris.

“The end of last year wasn’t going to be easy for him,” says Auld. “He was leading the championship and then things changed. The way he responded to the media, the way he handled himself publicly, I think he would have made any Australian proud.”

According to Auld, Piastri’s down-to-earth nature stands out.

“So even though he doesn’t spend much time in Australia anymore, the things he loves are very Australian,” Auld added. “He loves the AFL, he loves cricket and he is not swayed by the fame that F1 brings.

“He’s still himself and I think his family would be very proud.”

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Piastri and her mother, Nicole, have frequently collaborated with My Room, an organization that helps children with cancer.

Last year, Oscar was photographed meeting McLaren fan Kruz Seumanutafa, a young boy battling a rare form of leukemia. Seumanutafa died in October.

“We knew it was him when we were in F1” [Kruz] It was a terminal condition, but we put the diagnosis aside,” mother Lauren Seumanutafa told this imprint.

“The excitement of meeting Oscar Piastri was something our family looked forward to, and when we met him it stuck with him. [Kruz] and our entire family forever.

“Hopefully in the future we look back on those really difficult times in our lives, but I know it was an important moment when Cruise met Oscar.”

Lauren said the support the Piastri family gave them was incredible and shared that they were sent personalized videos and a bouquet of flowers from Oscar when Kruz passed away.

The Seumanutafa family continues to admire Piastri and describe him as a wonderful man.

“Honestly, I’m at a loss for words but he’s a true hero and he’s given Kruz so much hope and we love him so much too. We really hope he wins this year,” Lauren said.

So can Piastri dethrone Norris and win this year? Despite the Papaya team’s dominance last season, the new 2026 rules paint a complex picture.

Piastri admits McLaren are not the favorites to win, but he thinks the team is at the front of the pack.

“I don’t think the picture for us at the moment looks as positive as it did 12 months ago, but I think the biggest caveat to this for everyone is that there’s still a lot of untapped potential.”

With Lachlan Abbott and Daniel Brettig

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