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In every great Formula One driver’s career, a few stand-out races mark their arrival among the elite of the grid.
Think of Lewis Hamilton at Canada in 2007, winning only his sixth grand prix after a perfect run of podiums to start his rookie year, which commenced with passing reigning world champion and McLaren teammate Fernando Alonso on the very first corner of the season in Australia.
Or Max Verstappen’s debut victory for Red Bull at Spain in 2016, soaking up pressure from three established grand prix winners at 18 to hold on and set an F1 record that’ll likely never be beaten as the sport’s youngest winner.
Or Charles Leclerc’s back-to-back victories at Spa and Monza in 2019, scored in mourning over the death of Anthoine Hubert but executed with such composure and maturity.
Now, Oscar Piastri has that performance to his name. A coming-of-age drive.
It’s no secret how good Piastri is. He has a junior CV that is the envy of the rest of the F1 grid, and his potential put him at the heart of a contract battle between Alpine and McLaren to sign him for 2023. He’s already an F1 race winner and has scored more points than any other driver in the last 10 races.
Yet the fashion of Piastri’s victory in Baku on Sunday proved that, for all of the spotlight placed on Lando Norris and his priority in the title race, this is a driver more than ready to fight for a world championship himself.
It’s probably not going to be this year. Piastri is 91 points back from Verstappen, meaning McLaren is right to make Norris, only 59 points behind, its priority. But regardless of the outcome of this year’s title race, McLaren knows it will enter 2025 with two drivers capable of fighting for a title if given the right car.
I wrote off the back of Leclerc’s superb victory at Monza that, at a time in F1 when the margins are so fine between the leading teams, it often comes down to moments of brilliance from the drivers that make the difference. Through the opening stint of Sunday’s race, it seemed that would be the case again with Leclerc, who, starting from pole for the fourth time in Baku, was in total control of the race at the front with a five-second buffer to Piastri.
A one-lap undercut for Piastri and a slow out lap for Leclerc wiped the gap away, giving Piastri a chance to go for that brilliant lunge at Turn 1 to take the lead. Leclerc admitted to Piastri in the cool-down room that it caught him by surprise, and he figured he’d get the cutback or recover with DRS. And if not then, there’d be a later opportunity. Surely.
Except there wasn’t a later opportunity. There were a handful of close moments where Leclerc got a good drive out of the final corner, allowing him to move to the inside as they approached Turn 1 with DRS. Each time, Piastri darted across perfectly to defend. Running a little too much wing, Leclerc had no way to ease past.
The quality of Piastri’s defensive moves alone deserves high praise. That’s before you factor in that he was managing his hard tires to complete a 36-lap stint, going so quickly that Leclerc sounded surprised by the pace on the radio — and then ran out of tires himself by the end.
And then there’s the fact it’s Baku, one of the most demanding tracks on the F1 calendar, where paper-thin margins separate the cars from the walls. No wonder Piastri called it the most stressful race of his life.
Stress isn’t an emotion one would associate with Piastri. His calm, collected demeanor has been present right from his junior days. The demands of fighting at the front in F1 haven’t changed him one bit. Even in the cool-down room, he had time to deadpan a joke about Pérez and Sainz’s fraught weekend while watching highlights of their late crash. A master of timing.
Mark Webber, the former Red Bull F1 driver and Piastri’s manager, appeared on Sky Sports after the race to discuss his fellow Australian’s achievement. He used the word “confusing” to describe Piastri’s maiden win in Hungary, where a team orders call from McLaren put him back into the lead late on. This was anything but.
“That was, I think, one of the best drives I’ve ever seen him pull off,” Webber said. “Obviously under a lot of pressure, defensive, very decisive in the move itself. And up against a world-class driver — Charles around here is absolutely magical. So to beat him is a pretty big deal.”
Like Piastri himself, much of his season has been understated but filled with quiet quality. He’s consistently been bringing home the points hauls. While he trailed Norris slightly in the early part of the year, it’s felt far closer since Monaco. Even in Miami, when Piastri didn’t have the upgrade Norris did en route to a first win, he was in the hunt for a podium prior to the clash with Sainz that ruined his race.
Baku was the statement drive that Piastri was perhaps missing in F1. He’s impressed mightily since debuting — his Qatar sprint win last year was the only defeat Red Bull suffered post-Singapore — and there was never any doubt he was a great driver.
This performance, one that made him look like a veteran, not an F1 sophomore, showed he’s not just great. Piastri can be elite.
“It’s been clicking a bit more for me this year in terms of the things I want to work on from last season,” Piastri said. “You combine that with a car that’s capable of winning, and results like this are possible.”
Zak Brown, McLaren’s CEO, has often claimed he has the best driver line-up on the F1 grid. A couple of his rival team principals would naturally argue that case. Leaving Baku and now with the constructors’ championship lead, it genuinely feels like McLaren might be in the strongest position to have two drivers in the title hunt from day one next season.
If that is the case, I wonder what “papaya rules” might end up looking like. A very good problem for Piastri to give McLaren.
Top photo: Sipa USA
