Driver Deep Dive #2: Oscar Piastri

whoo welcome back to the f1 fun cast the only formula one podcast out there for new intermediate and used fans alike that's right used fans those fans have been around the block a few times and they know everything but maybe a little bit of that a little bit of that new fan shine has come off you're welcome here too and if you're a brand new fan I'd like to welcome you to the formula one world as well and now that I'm on the subject I might as well just talk about it that I know these sports and entertainment have a lot of gatekeepers and people who like to decide who can be a fan and who cannot be a fan and who hasn't been a fan long enough and who knows enough and who doesn't know enough and on and on and on and on and that's not what we're doing here we're not doing that at the f1 fun cast whether it's your first time tuning into a grand prix or you've been watching from the very first you're welcome here I want your input your advice your thoughts your predictions this is a community for people who are interested in the nicer side of formula one I've noticed that there's online there's a contingent that really feel like it's their job to tell people to not be fans for whatever reason I noticed that women get a lot of hard time not all not all but I've noticed online a lot of stuff directed towards women about their fandom and how they aren't real fans people tell them that they only like it because they think the drivers are cute or whatever but that's all nonsense those people need to wake up and realize that this can be for anybody and if formula one is so great you're not going to keep it all to yourself anyway dumb dumb other people are going to catch on other people are going to want to watch it you should feel good about that right shouldn't people feel good about more people getting interested in the same things they are interested in that's one thing I never understood is the whole I was here first so no no fake fans and all that it's it's a community for everybody I mean who are we to decide who and when and why and what is the cutoff date when did you have to be a fan to be part of the club what was the day what was the time so we're not going to get into that that's not how we're going to be here this is a welcoming community for anyone and everyone who is interested in the world of formula one so I guess I should tell you I haven't even said it yet but this is the f1 fun cast you can find me at f1 fun cast on gmail Twitter Instagram we're going to be growing that I really am trying to avoid tick-tock with all my heart but it seems like that might be the way to go for some more types of exposure but it's not about the exposure here at the f1 fun cast it's about having fun not about making money it's not about gaining the most followers it's about something I really enjoy and learning about it and sharing with you and having you share with me back and forth so with that being said sorry to start us off on a on a hot note I just you know being on f1 Twitter I think I said it in the last time it can be a daunting place to be on social media and I saw it today I saw some people that were really going through a tough time in their personal life and they got attacked for being fake formula one fans so that's not right and it really rubs me the wrong way and we might find over the course of this podcast that there's quite a few things that rub your humble podcaster the wrong way throughout my day-to-day life and I'm going to try not to come on here and vent it to you all and nobody wants to hear anyway but that's the way it goes if I'm out there in the Formula One universe and I'm seeing something I don't like I anyone who knows knows me knows I have a hard time biting my tongue about anything so I just want to let you know out there if you're one of those fans that you want to come in here and degrade people for how long they've been a fan or for their knowledge base this is not the place for you but this is going to be the place I'm happy to announce we're going to have some new I'll have my first guest over the weekend or over the next week or so we're going to be having finally add some knowledge to this here podcast what do you think we will be introducing who I like to call the crew chief my cousin Connor he knows more about Formula One engines motors the like than the whole the whole lot of those fans out there that need to be gatekeepers so yeah the crew chief is going to be joining me this week to talk some technical technical car stuff and give you introduce him to you all and so you can get to know him and his take and his he is a long-term fan and he does know everything but he wants you to be here too and he can't be here with me today but he's going to be on soon and he is the crew chief he's the boss I go to him and ask him for questions and then I come and talk to you guys I could know what I'm talking about but I don't so once we get on him on here I guess he can expose me as the fraud that I feel like sometimes when I'm talking about things I'm just learning about and yeah so cousin Connor the crew chief will be in here starting early next week probably not every podcast but definitely where we need technical analysis insight history things like that he's going to be a great addition in here really excited to have him on and if you're out there listening and you would like to come on and you know something you would like to join you would like to share your information share your knowledge I welcome it email me at a fun fun cast at gmail.com and I will be more than happy to check it out get you on here and and if you don't if you don't want to come on and you just want to tweet or send me a message on Instagram I'll be more than happy to share it's what I do we're going to share I'll shout you out we'll tag you and I hope you know you all can be a part of a growing community of positive forward-facing formula one fans so that's the excitement for the day and now let's talk about the main course there I want to say hors d'oeuvre but that's not the main course to entree there we are the entree this week is we're doing for those of you that haven't listened before we're doing a but I call the driver deep dive series which is a series of podcasts that look at how the current grid got to where they are on the f1 on the f1 grid their journey to formula one and their journey so far in formula one and we're not going into people's personal lives we're not talking about family we're not talking about money any of that stuff you can leave that at home we're talking about the racing here on the f1 fun cast and if you missed the last one we started with Nick DeVries Alpha Tauri he was the first he was the inaugural f1 fun cast driver deep dive and I had a lot of fun reading about and learning about him so we did another poll today and the winner of this poll is none other than McLaren's Oscar Piastrian oh boy did he have an interesting run to formula one didn't he last year 2022 I mean if there wasn't enough drama on the track the whole Piastri, McLaren, Alpine, Pierre Gasly that's the kind of drama we will be talking about on here that's not personal that's just business that's on the track that's between the lines that's what we'll be talking about I'm really excited to talk about Oscar Piastri today because you know he's a young driver he's up-and-coming he was sought after last year and a really interesting guy and he it should be it's a lot of fun looking into him and finding out how exactly he got to where he is today in that McLaren seat because as many as few as six months ago there was no guarantee that that's where he was going to end up but we'll get into the tweet we're going to get into the into the weeds a little bit here and talk about how the young man Oscar Piastri found his way to the papaya papaya kingdom in McLaren so let's fire it on up to get into it all right so Oscar Piastri born April 6 2001 is 22 years old he actually just celebrated a birthday this past week the week of recording his 22nd birthday interesting little factoid about Oscar is he is the first Formula One driver born in the 21st century so April 6 2001 he's the first F1 driver born in the 2000s yet again making your podcaster feel older than he intended to feel when he woke up this morning he drives the number 81 car for McLaren and he's made three starts thus far in his Formula One career accumulating a total of four points he finished P8 at the 2023 Australian Grand Prix earning himself his first and at this point only Formula One points of his career thus far I guess I don't need to say to this point and thus far and to just repetitive but that's what it is he's a young guy just getting into it four points that eighth place finish in Australia now if you're listening to this from the future this Australian Grand Prix this year was a train wreck it was the race if you look on the podcast feed it was the three red flags and a lot of nonsense and chaos so I'm not sure how representative that eighth place finish is but nonetheless he's a very skilled and young talented driver who should certainly be looking for more points in his near term future and also down the road he definitely knows how to handle the car just four points thus far but there's gonna be many more to come as far as I can tell so from 2016 to 2021 Oscar was a pretty dominant junior driver on the junior circuit in 2020 he was the f3 champion and 2022 he or sorry 2021 he was the f2 champion which you know you win f3 you win f2 it looks like there's a future for you in Formula One and so that's kind of where we pick up this saga of Oscar Piestre because he was on a clear trajectory to that Alpine seat which was Renault before rebranded as Alpine he was on a clear path to that seat on the team it was looking like 2023 was going to be his debut year in the Alpine but then as we all know things changed very quickly for the young man last fall he's ended up this year he's not he made it into McLaren and we're going to talk a little bit about the saga that was how how he he went from Alpine to McLaren and with a little bit of bad blood in between and a little bit of how should we put it just just you know I don't know if there's going to be a reunion in the future for Oscar and Alpine after everything went that went down during the 2022 Formula One season so what are we talking about here we're talking about the chain of events that started in my opinion with and and there's two two ways to look at this but my opinion is it it started with that on that very sad day that Sebastian Vettel decided that he would say goodbye to Formula One and pursue the rest of his life in in retirement and and that was as they say the first domino to fall in the Oscar Piazza story that was you know the new hope to the rise of Skywalker at the end Sebastian Vettel announced his retirement and so at that point that opened up a seat on let's see was it still racing point no it was Aston Martin at that point so Aston Martin has a seat available and Alpine has some some drama on the paddock because as we all know Fernando Alonso ended up taking that empty seat at Aston Martin and he's doing very well so far this year there Aston Martin so then Alpine's looking at a driver lineup they originally had Esteban Ocon, Fernando Alonso and Oscar Piazza so when Vettel retires and Fernando Alonso moves to to Aston Martin the clear thing the clear step would be for Oscar Piazza to step into Fernando Alonso's old seat and race for Alpine the only problem with that was Alpine never told Oscar that that's what they had planned for him from what I gather a lot of the Oscar Piazza Alpine McLaren drama what we have is a failure to communicate a failure to communicate that you're going to drive for us next year Oscar no I'm not this all could be handled behind the scenes and it could be handled in a better way but but that's just not how it played out so on August 1st Alpine announces that Oscar Piazza is going to drive for us in 2023 and apparently that was news to Oscar because on August 3rd Oscar tweeted out the following let me pull this up I want to get it word-for-word and you tell me if you think this sounds like somebody who's excited to join his new team and take that seat on Alpine so this is August 3rd two days after Alpine made the announcement that Oscar would be driving for them quote I understand that without my agreement Alpine F1 have put out a press release late this afternoon that I am driving for them next year this is wrong and I have not signed a contract with Alpine for 2023 I will not be driving for Alpine next year Wow so you imagine you're sitting there in the Alpine headquarters or in the garage and you think you've got your guy you know you lost Fernando Alonso but that's okay because you've poured a lot of money into Oscar Piazza you poured a lot of money into your young I think it was something like 17 million dollars or maybe seven million dollars that they had poured into his development and just like that with a tweet he's letting you know I'm out of here next year too so that leaves Alpine sitting there with just Esteban Ocon and an empty car so they had they went from having three real Formula One drivers to choose from to being stuck with one driver and a big question mark so this really started and accelerated the whole kerfuffle and you can you can understand both sides of it right you can understand the team wanting to lock their guy up and to have him in the seat for 2023 and you can understand Oscar sitting there saying I haven't signed anything I haven't you haven't presented me with a rightful contract which we'll get into in a minute Alpine certainly mishandled and was not really on the ball with their contract end of of this and like anybody it was Oscars right to decide his own future and I think it would rub me the wrong way if I was at home between races and my my employer my boss my team decided they were going to announce an extension without one giving me a proper extension and two without consulting me beforehand so it's understandable for him to be frustrated and it's understandable for Alpine to pour a ton of money into this kid and have him snub them in such a 21st century way on Twitter which you know I have my thoughts about how he handled that I think maybe phone calls and face-to-face meetings are a better way to do things but I wasn't there if I was maybe he'd be driving for Alpine or if I was maybe he would have punched me in the face I don't know but behind the scenes or not I guess on the in front of the scenes was his relationship with McLaren began to develop a little bit more deeply during the Monaco Grand Prix weekend in 2022 I don't know if you remember this but Lando Norris came down with a pretty bad case of tonsillitis it was questionable whether he was going to be able to go whether he would be able to race so McLaren was asking around looking around for reserve drivers and they landed on Piastri and I believe he was on the paddock with them that weekend and ready to roll for McLaren and so that's kind of where I don't know you know nobody really knows what goes on in private conversations but I'm sure there was a little bit of wink wink nudge nudge we'd love to have you here next year if that's possible and then you turn around in your team announces your your re-signing when you haven't re-signed anything you look across you look down the way and there's McLaren sitting there with an open seat from they had been trying to get out from under Daniel Ricciardo's 17 million dollar a year contract where he'd been really underperforming for McLaren so we've got a driver that doesn't want to be on his team and a team that wants a new driver so of course McLaren and Oscar Piastri were playing a little bit of footsies under the table and Alpine didn't really help themselves with the way they they handled his announcement now at this point we should talk a little bit about how Alpine also mishandled the legal and contract end of this because from what I gather they did not meet the proper deadlines to extend Oscar Piastri they did not meet the proper prerequisites to keep him under contract into the future and in fact they went back and retroactively added some language to their contracts that was not in the version Oscar signed the previous year so Alpine was starting to play a little bit of games with Oscar and with his future and I'm sure that that kind of set in motion his wandering eyes for the 2023 year because here you are this F2 champion F3 champion you're ready to go you're obviously capable these teams want you and they're not extending you they're misleading you on your contracts and the contract resolution board I believe it's called the CRB took a look at this and they looked into it and they ruled that Alpine they ruled against Alpine they said you messed up you didn't really secure a proper contract with the driver he's free to go to McLaren and furthermore you have to pay everybody's legal fees for this mess that you've created so that's really that says a lot when a when a resolution board or any kind of court or any kind of mediator not only rules against you but forces you to pay the fees of the other party that's definitely a sign that you did something wrong and I don't want to say unethical but maybe a little bit a little bit unusual a little bit it wasn't you know not not a good look so that comes down in the CRB board rules against Alpine so that set up this pretty interesting situation where Daniel Ricciardo is without a seat McLaren's trying to get out from under him at least and Alpine is losing their guy and they want compensation they want something back in return for their French team and you know they they had a list of guys they had a list of drivers that they wanted maybe perhaps a driver swap or as compensation and I don't believe I think they let on that Daniel Ricciardo could be on that list but really in the back of their mind I am sure that the French team really wanted Pierre Gasly and he ended up with Alpine to give them an all French lineup for the French team the Alpine is actually partially owned by the French state so at the end of the day Alpine feels like maybe they came out smelling a little better than they could have if they dragged us to a lawsuit to court and really really tried to squeeze out every bit of compensation that they could get for Oscar so so over the course of the next few weeks negotiations were pretty intense between McLaren Alpine and whatever regulators had to be involved during that time but eventually Alpine ends up with Pierre Gasly, Esteban Ocon and Oscar finds himself moving over to McLaren and sitting in that seat for the 2023 season he was announced as the as a driver for McLaren on September 2nd so this all went down remember August 1st Alpine announced Oscar Piastri driving for us 2023 August 3rd the tweet comes out with Piastri saying I'm not driving for you pretty much I'm never going to drive for Alpine you guys have bungled this and I don't want to be here anymore and then by September 2nd he was announced so that all happened in about a month's time so the sequence of events is four-time champ Sebastian Vettel says goodbye to Formula One Fernando Alonso moves over to Aston Martin and then that opens up the seat there at Oscar he doesn't want to be there McLaren makes a move all these negotiations go on and Oscar finally finds himself on the McLaren side of things I'd be interested to see what you think is and so so okay the all this drama all this nonsense about Oscar moving around and not being available for Alpine was that the driving factor to this or do you think the bungled contract negotiations in the poorly worded contracts in the back dealing in the just a slight dishonesty from Alpine when they went and changed his contract language without him knowing which to you do you think is a bigger driver of Oscars move away from Alpine would you be more offended if your company messed around with your contract or would you be more offended if they wouldn't if they didn't communicate with you about your promotion and they just announced it on your whatever your company's email or over some public way what do you think is more of the driver here between the two things I'd love to know I'd love to hear what you think about that because there's two sides to every coin you know and an Alpine thinks they came out smelling like roses with Pierre Gasly and that's about all cotton and McLaren they're they're trying to get back on the upswing and I'm sure they're glad to have piastri but what does this say about him going forward does he if it doesn't work out at McLaren does it say something about his reputation will it be hard for him to get another another seat after kind of having so much drama so early in a young season or do you think he's got enough promise that he's going to run with it and this will be long forgotten by 2024 I don't know it's hard to say but from what I've seen so far he's a talented driver and he seems like a decent guy and it's it's it's too bad that anyone has to have this kind of stuff going on so early in their promising young careers the closest the closest parallel that I could find in my research was the 1991 Michael Schumacher Jordan contract debacle that ended up with him leaving that team in a very similar manner he was unhappy with the team he was unhappy with the direction of things and I don't know all the details but it certainly to me seemed like that is very very similar type of situation between driver and team and if that's any indication I'm not saying Oscar Piastri is going to be anything close to a Michael Schumacher but unless you're digging through the internet to remember and to find these things nobody remembers that about Michael Schumacher they remember the wins the podiums the championships etc so there's a lot to be said that that these things can be overcome and put in the past but we don't live in the past we live in the present and in the present time this was one of the hottest stories in 2022 heading into the 2023 Formula One season so with Oscars journey to Formula One out of the way let's just take a little peek at his debut season and how it's been going so far in the papaya orange McLaren Formula One car so early in 2023 in Bahrain Oscar had a bit of a nightmare in his debut race for McLaren he qualified 18th which you know I mean no one's gonna hold that against you in your first Formula One start but after 15 15 laps he had to come into the pit to change his steering wheel and to change your steering wheel you have to shut the car off and when he shut the car off they couldn't get it back on they couldn't get the car started again something with the gearbox and he had to retire from the race pointless and without finishing without finishing the Grand Prix so that is that had to have been a disappointing start for Oscar then we went to Saudi Arabia and he qualified P8 and finished in P15 so a full race and maybe not the result he was looking for but the McLaren didn't bail out on him and he was able to finish that race but then we went to Australia and like we talked about earlier he was able to finish P8 and score the first points of his career four points for Oscar in that race and those four points put him 13th in the driver standings right now which if you're a rookie driver and it's your your first three races of the year and you've got some points and you've got some you know maybe there's a little wind at his back maybe you get those first tinks out of the way on in Bahrain and then in Saudi Arabia but it's hard to say it's hard to say it's hard to predict I don't know enough to look into the future into my crystal ball but that's where Oscar stands now heading into Baku in two weeks time so we wish Oscar all the best this season and going forward and he's had quite the interesting road to Formula One and an interesting start to his Formula One career here in 2023 and you know I wish I had a little bit more data or a little bit a few more races to give you give you results but that's that's it that's where we are right now we're in a long break between races and we are it's tough it's tough to judge these things without more of a more races and more data to look at so overall you know he's certainly a talented enough driver he certainly has the pedigree those F2 F3 championships are definitely you know point him in the right direction and scoring points in your first first you know in your third race of your career that's that's pretty good and again you know the Aussie Grand Prix was plagued with red flags and a lot of did not finishes DNFs but you can't hold it against him it's not his fault other people crashed out he took advantage of it and boom he got his first four points of the season so there we are that's Oscar Piastri in a nutshell getting us into the 2023 season a bit of a deep dive and we wish him all the best going forward this year and in the future hopefully someday we can go back and and do a 2.0 on him and talk about his podium finishes and his long and illustrious career so yeah that's that's Oscar Piastri. I just want to look ahead now a little bit at the the next podcast I'm going to do I'm really interested in we're going to be talking about the new the new sprint race format that is coming this year and the new sprint race format I believe is actually going to start in two weeks when we go to Azerbaijan and it seems to be very controversial people don't like change people don't like new things but at the same time even Max Verstappen has come out and said if they keep this up he's not going to be around for too much longer because instead of that we'll get into it in the next podcast but it's almost like a double weekend with a sprint race with a new with a new qualifying format and a sprint race and then a Grand Prix that it's got a lot of people up in arms and a lot of and a lot of people feeling apprehensive about it but I'm going to I'm going to go in with an open mind in two weeks and I suggest you do too because maybe it could be great you know maybe it could be one of those things that doesn't look so great on paper but turns out to be a wonderful way to spend a weekend so thank you for checking in with me this time on the f1 fun cast and remember if you have questions or if you want to come on here and talk or whatever it is just just let me know hit me up at f1 fun cast gmail Twitter Instagram and I look forward to talking about that that new sprint race format coming up with the crew chief my my crew chief should be on for that podcast looking forward to it looking forward to talking about all things formula one this year and it's a long two weeks isn't it it's a long time to wait for the next race but I hope you go out there and you find a way to enjoy yourself have some fun and we will talk to you all again soon thank you for joining me today on the f1 fun cast take care everybody