Oscar Piastri, Martin Brundle, six months to impress
Aussie rising star Oscar Piastri will get just six months to prove that he belongs in Formula 1 before he risks being turfed out, according to Sky Sports F1 commentator Martin Brundle. Piastri has enjoyed an illustrious junior career on his way to the premier class, with three successive championships, including rookie titles in Formula 3 and Formula 2. Despite spending a year on the sidelines as an Alpine reserve driver, he remains one of the most highly anticipated rookies in recent years thanks to his sparkling CV. But his successful journey to Formula 1 will count for little when the lights go out in Bahrain, and Brundle says the first races of Piastri’s season could make or break his career. “I think it’ll depend on how it starts for him, the first few races,” he told Fox Sports. "If he gets some good results in and he gets some confidence, then there’ll be a big shunt somewhere that’ll catch his attention inevitable. But if you start with some tangles in the first few corners and a bit of reliability, maybe you can’t find your way one weekend and your chin drops, that’s a very telling moment then as to whether you can turn that around and keep your self-belief.”
Brundle said Piastri would be given the same cutthroat treatment as any other rookie once he takes his place on the grid and would have six months at most to prove himself as F1 material. “They’re probably given, if you’re going to be generous, the first half of the season to find their way, but in the second half of the season they need to be on it or they’re going to get changed,” he said. “There are no excuses in Formula 1. There’s nowhere to hide. You’ve got to deliver.” But few doubt Piastri is made of the right stuff to make his F1 career a success.
The 21-year-old Melburnian has been praised for his maturity in and out of the car, and Brundle said there was little reason to doubt that Piastri would thrive in motorsport’s top tier. “He comes very highly rated,” he said. “I like talking to the lad. He’s very bright, he’s very focused extremely focused, from what I can work out and a lot of people where he’s come up through the ranks have spoken incredibly highly of him. Formula 1’s a different game longer races, bigger cars, heavier cars, especially at the start of the race. He’s got Lando Norris across the garage, a team like McLaren with high expectations. So he’ll need all of that confidence. [But] all the signs and everything I’m told is that he’s the real deal.”
Despite the satisfaction of finally finding a place on the grid, Piastri’s streak of title success will come to a shuddering halt this season, with McLaren tipped to fare poorly early in the season based on the MCL60’s pace during pre-season testing. It could be a bitter pill for him to swallow considering Alpine, which brought him into F1 as a reserve driver and intended for him to one day race in one of its cars, appears to have taken a step forward from the midfield. The spectacular meltdown in relations between Mark Webber-managed Piastri and the Otmar Szafnauer-led Alpine was one of last season’s biggest talking points.
However, Brundle doubts that Piastri would be keeping the sliding-doors moment in the back of his mind, with his focus turning to maximising his performance instead. “That’s just such old news now,” he said. “If an Alpine breezes past him, maybe in commentary people are going to be saying, ‘That’s a bit painful; maybe he wishes he was in the other car’, but they took their decisions based on the information available to them. I know the backstory, but it’s old news. It’s all about tomorrow now, not what happened last year on contracts.”
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