- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
After two races of the 2023 Formula 1 World Championship, rookie Oscar Piastri will make his long awaited and much anticipated debut on home soil at this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix.
The 21-year old from Brighton, a mere 20-minutes from the Albert Park circuit, will be racing at his home track for the McLaren team, which signed the Aussie as a replacement for the embattled Daniel Ricciardo mid-last year.
That move didn’t come without controversy, as Alpine also had announced Piastri would be racing for them in 2023 as replacement for Aston Martin bound Fernando Alonso, only for the Aussie to rebuke that statement and claim there was no contract in place.
With plenty of expectation on his shoulders, having emphatically won the F2 and F3 feeder series’ titles in successive seasons and then having tested extensively with the French manufacturer before pledging his allegiances to McLaren, the opening rounds have been quite disappointing for Piastri.
He raced to twelfth from the second last row of the grid in Bahrain, before suffering a terminal electrical issue and then had his stellar, maiden Q3 appearance in Jeddah fall by the wayside when contact was made with Alpine’s Pierre Gasly early on at turn two. The rest of that race was spent trudging at the rear of the field, 90 seconds off the leader and scrapping with teammate Lando Norris and fellow rookie Logan Sargeant over irrelevant positions.
Oscar Piastri has won consistently, but can he do the same in Formula 1? (Photo by Gongora/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
McLaren are the ones who’ve arrived in the new season undercooked and after a 2022 that saw them slip from fourth to fifth in the constructor’s championship, there was onus on them to improve through development during the European winter.
Instead, the illustrious team from Woking announced during the launch of their MCL-60, celebrating 60 years since the eponymous Bruce McLaren founded the team, that they’ll be banking on key updates to kick-start their campaign, which are not due until the fourth race in Baku.
It has been a sad demise, particularly given McLaren’s recent trajectory of having finished third in the championship in 2020, before claiming its first race win courtesy of Ricciardo in 2021.
Piastri’s decision to choose McLaren over Alpine now seems curious, when the latter has demonstrated far more in performance with the ground effect cars. However the mismanagement on show at the French manufacturer would entice anyway to look elsewhere – just ask Alonso.
It’ll be hoping, along with a strong brigade of supporters, that McLaren’s recent success wasn’t a false dawn and that with the coming key infrastructure and development tools put in place by former Team Principal Andreas Seidl, such as their new state-of-the-art wind tunnel and simulator, their target of returning to winning ways by 2025 can realised.
That is potentially why it was announced in the break between Saudi Arabia and Australia, that McLaren had parted ways with Technical Director James Key, a man conspicuously absent from the majority of the team’s pre-season activities.
Instead, new team boss Andrea Stella has opted for a multi-faceted technical department, with a trio of chiefs in Peter Prodromou, Neil Houldey and the recently hired from Ferrari, Dave Sanchez.
“This new structure provides clarity and effectiveness within the team’s technical department and puts us in a strong position to maximise performance, including optimising the new infrastructure upgrades we have coming in 2023,” said Stella in a statement confirming the changes.
2025 is dangerously close in Formula 1 terms and a lot will be speculated upon about McLaren, should their current trajectory not change. The much anticipated Baku upgrades will be telling, if they can again return to the front of what is an extremely competitive midfield this year.
For Piastri, it is a little saddening to see him make his Albert Park debut in machinery destined for Q1 exits, but hopefully the young Aussie can stitch together something special, as did Norris and Ricciardo twelve months ago with a robust top six finish.
Looking for great odds on racing and sport? Get into the action with PlayUp today. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.