My First Race: Oscar Piastri

Ask a driver to distil the emotions of their maiden Grand Prix into one word or phrase, and the all-too-easy escape route is to lean into it being the glorious realisation of a childhood dream or, if the driver is brazen enough, to dismiss it as the next unpressured step towards destiny. Ask Oscar Piastri the same question and the answer is refreshingly honest.

“The first thing that comes to mind is nerves,” he laughs. “I tried to enjoy it as much as I could, but ultimately, I think nerves are the biggest thing I remember. I had been waiting for that opportunity for a while.”

Lauded as a driver destined for F1, Oscar blazed his way through F1’s feeder series, winning the Formula Renault Eurocup, Formula 3 and Formula 2 Championships in successive seasons. An F1 seat was the natural next step, but having quickly climbed the single-seater ladder, he’d then have to wait a year for an F1 seat to become available.

It was time he used wisely, spending a season learning the ropes with Alpine as their F1 Reserve Driver, before joining McLaren for 2023. His time on the sidelines gave him a good grounding in the increased expectations and spotlight in F1, but also intensified the interest in his eventual debut.

“I was coming in as the F2 Champion, so there was some pressure, both in me wanting to prove what I could do to myself, but also in everyone else wanting to see what I was capable of,” he recalls.

But while the nerves were present, there was also excitement in knowing that, although he’d spent the previous year in the paddock shadows, this time he was properly in the spotlight.

“Walking into the F1 paddock knowing that you’re there to race was really cool,” he smiles. “I’d been to F1 races in the paddock before, so it wasn’t a completely new experience, but it was different because I was doing all the activities, not watching other drivers do them. It was busy, I remember that, but a really cool feeling.”

There was another challenge, too. The team’s pre-season with the new MCL60 – named for the team’s 60th anniversary – hadn’t been entirely smooth. Team Principal Andrea Stella had called for patience as we awaited major upgrades that would overhaul the MCL60 from an evolved version of our flawed 2022 car into our fully fledged 2023 challenger. The repercussions of this included limited mileage during testing and a car that wasn’t fully competitve with the front of the grid. So although the future looked bright, for a rookie seeking a clean first weekend, the demands were significant.

If he was feeling the pressure, Oscar didn’t show it. In Friday’s practice session, he was his usual unflappable self, steadily working through the team’s run plan and feeding himself into the car, the tyres and the Sakhir circuit on his way to P15 on the FP2 timesheet.

“My first official Friday done,” he said afterwards. “I feel like I’m making progress, which is good. There are some improvements to find, but I feel like I’m getting there.”

The steady progress continued on Saturday morning as he ended FP3 in ninth place. Two hours later, however, the pressure ratcheted right up as Qualifying approached.

“Qualifying is always one of the highest-pressure moments of the weekend, especially in F1,” he says. “In all the racing I had done before, you normally have a couple of attempts in Qualifying, or a couple of laps on the same set of tyres, whereas in F1 you get one chance per set of tyres. The pressure of trying to adapt to that was a bit tough.”

He qualified 18th, his session cut short by an early Red Flag that limited him to two runs. And on the final of those, the rookie later admitted that he “just didn’t nail it”.

“We’ll do our homework and see what we can do,” he added. “Tomorrow is another day.”

Post-session debriefs and strategy briefings were crucial parts of his build-up, but they only go so far. For a rookie lining up for his first Grand Prix, no amount of prep can keep the butterflies entirely at bay.

“There were nerves sitting on the grid and working out how the start was going to be,” he says with a sigh. “I hadn’t raced anything for 12 months, or over 12 months, so just getting back into a race again was interesting. And then being around other cars and being in a Formula 1 race was a bit nerve-racking at the start.”

Once the lights went out, there were positives. Oscar made a good start, gained three places and began to settle. But then an electrical problem intervened. The team attempted to solve it by changing the Aussie’s steering wheel, but the issue remained, and his debut ended in retirement after 13 laps.

“Obviously not the finish to the weekend that I wanted, but there are positives to take,” he said afterwards. “I still learned a lot, and I’m glad I’ve now made my debut.”

Melbourne has hosted the F1 season opener in both of the last two seasons, but back in 2023, the calendar started with races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. This allowed Oscar a chance to adjust to the intense demands of F1 at two quieter races before experiencing the madness of being the hero at his home Grand Prix.

“The off-track stuff hit me more in Melbourne,” he said. “That one was a bit more like, ‘whoa, this is pretty different to any other race I’ve been to before.’”

It was also the race in which he scored his first Formula 1 points, finishing eighth at the end of a chaotic Grand Prix.

“That was cool,” he says. “At that stage, getting points was a really good effort, so it was nice to be able to do it at home. That weekend was pretty wild in terms of the experience I had.”

The journey since has been extraordinary. McLaren’s 2023 season transformed rapidly, from fighting to escape Q1 at the start of the year to fighting for podiums by mid-season. Oscar grew with the team, taking his first F1 podium in Japan, and two weeks later, his first Sprint victory in Qatar. The steps that followed have been even bigger: multiple podiums, race wins, Constructors’ Championship success and a confirmed place at F1’s top table.

“It’s very special to have seen that journey we’ve gone on,” he says. “Even the first year, 2023, it was pretty insane how things changed through the year. Battling to get out of Q1 at certain points at the beginning, to battling for points and for podiums, that was pretty crazy to go through that quickly.

“In hindsight, I’m probably glad that it started the way it did and we were able to go on that journey together. We want to try and stay at the top of that journey now, but it’s a pretty special thing to have been a part of.”

The nerves remain, though their nature has changed.

“I still get nervous, but definitely not as nervous as that,” he says. “The first race was nerves of wanting to prove myself and basically not do a bad job, whereas now the nerves are about wanting to get a good start or, if we can win the race, win the race. Now it’s much more performance-led nerves.”

Oscar recently overtook John Watson for McLaren Grand Prix starts, putting him 11^th on the list behind Denny Hulme. And at our 1000^th Grand Prix at Monaco, the once-nervous rookie confidently took his place in a grid gathering of McLaren winners for a commemorative photograph.

“It’s really special,” he says. “To have started 1,000 Grands Prix is pretty insane. For me to have been part of its successful history is really cool. To be able to say I was a part of winning history, I’ve got trophies in the cabinet here that I won, it’s a very cool thing to look at.”