Oscar Piastri makes ‘off the rails’ Alpine admission as F1 career theory debunked

Oscar Piastri admitted that not racing in 2022 showed him that drivers can “quickly go off the rails”, but he took in a lot of lessons while off-track at Alpine.

Piastri, then the Formula 2 champion, took in a reserve role at Alpine before moving onto the grid for 2023 with McLaren, but despite learning a lot about the off-track elements of Formula 1, he acknowledged “racing would have been better” for himself rather than a year off.

Oscar Piastri: ‘Racing would have been better’ for career development in 2022

The Australian took part in multiple Formula 1 tests for Alpine in his time away from the track, before the announcement came that he would be switching to McLaren for his debut in the top tier.

But off the back of having emulated Charles Leclerc and George Russell in winning the Formula 3 and Formula 2 titles back-to-back, he was left without a race seat in Formula 1 – with the rules of Formula 2 preventing the reigning champion from taking a place on the grid once again.

Despite a school of thought that could argue his year on the fringes would have acted as good preparation for the world of Formula 1, the now-McLaren driver believes that being on track would have been his preference.

“Racing would have been better,” Piastri told German publication Auto Motor und Sport when asked about his year on the sidelines.

“There is no environment in which you can prepare better. In my test year, I mainly learnt a lot about the world of Formula 1 outside the cockpit, more than I expected.

“I realised that you can quickly go off the rails, but I also learnt useful things about how to prepare your head for the races.

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“I was at all the meetings at Alpine. I realised that the mental attitude alone is not comparable with the junior classes.

“It’s a different playing field when you add the development of the car. In Formula 3 or 2, you have to work with the car that is given to you.

“Soaking that up without the pressure of having to race at the same time was certainly valuable.

“But if I had the choice again today, I would have preferred to continue straight after Formula 2.”

The announcement that he would instead be joining McLaren rather than Alpine caused ructions at the time, with the two teams going to the FIA’s Contract Recognitions Board to settle the dispute before finding in McLaren’s favour, where Piastri would replace Daniel Ricciardo.

When asked if he had felt under pressure because of the way he arrived in Formula 1, the McLaren driver replied: “Not really. I was under pressure to succeed anyway after my successes in the junior classes.

“The media storm after the team change made me realise this even more, but I never had the feeling that I now had to prove on the racetrack that my decision was the right one, rather that I belonged in Formula 1.

“The process that led to my decision was much more complicated than just deciding in favour of one team and against another.

“One team couldn’t give me clarity or answers to my questions, the other could. Of course, I was also attracted by McLaren’s history, and I immediately had the feeling that I was joining a team that would be successful, but I would never have dreamed that it would happen so quickly and that we would be as competitive as we are now.

“When I joined McLaren 18 months ago, we were almost last. Now we’ve turned everything on its head.

“Not just because the car has improved, the team has helped me to improve. Twelve months ago, results like this year would not have been possible.”

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