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4 hours ago
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Closer than ever to a driver title, or never again as close? Oscar Piastri will soon find out his foreseeable future in Formula One. But he says there’s one thing he won’t do: rebel against McLaren team orders.
The glitzy, globetrotting series is back and Melbourne offers a tantalising round of racing to start the season. Extensive changes to regulations have left each team grappling with new electric-boosted power units, and smaller, nimbler vehicles.
For Piastri, the changes come at an unfortunate time, given the dominance of the McLaren in recent years. He said on Thursday his team are no longer favourites, and he tipped Mercedes and Ferrari to lead early, with Red Bull not far behind, though his outfit will remain “in the mix” at the front, just “not right at the pointy end”.
The Australian held a championship lead of 34 points midway through last season, a lead of more than the amount awarded for a race victory. But he finished third behind teammate Lando Norris and Max Verstappen in a campaign which Piastri admits was a learning experience.
From the outside, McLaren appeared to be something less than a happy family, when decisions that advantaged Norris over Piastri coincided with the Australian’s loss of confidence. During the off-season, the approach to team orders have been reviewed and will be “streamlined” this season, which is likely to mean less interference from the garage.
But the Australian driver is adamant there is no schism between himself and chief executive Zak Brown. “We – just as a team, not necessarily Zak and I – obviously had some tough moments through last year, as any team has,” he said. “But I think our relationship’s only gotten stronger from that.”
The team radio, Piastri accepts, is gospel. “We’re always going to race for the best interests of the team, we’ve always had freedom to race for our own individual results as well,” he said. “Maybe on some occasions we’ve not always made the perfect decision, but I think for me the important part of that is there’s never been any bad intention with that.”
His loyalty reflects his privilege in the seat, even if Piastri is not No 1 at McLaren. “I’m certainly not going to have a rebellious streak or anything like that,” he said. “A pretty quick-fire way to make sure you’re not going to win a championship is go against your own team, so I don’t think that’s a very wise move.”
The F1 circus is brutal and taxing, but the grass is not always greener. Daniel Ricciardo is still only 36, but has given up hope of returning to Formula One even if he was a world-leading talent in the recent past. Jack Doohan was jettisoned by Alpine after just seven races, though is now in Melbourne as a reserve driver for Haas.
The grid’s honorary Australian, Valtteri Bottas, has made a return to F1 this year with new team Cadillac after spending 2025 as a reserve driver at Mercedes. The Finn spends the summer at a house in South Australia with his Australian partner, Tiffany Cromwell, who is an elite cyclist.
Bottas – who is only two months younger than Ricciardo – joked on Thursday that he was so pleased to be back on the grid that he was even happy to be doing press engagements. “I definitely have a better perspective of the sport and will appreciate it much more than I did two years ago,” he said.
He returns in a different place. In addition to Cadillac’s entry, Audi has taken over the Kick/Stake/Sauber team to bring another engine manufacturer on to the grid. Regulations have brought extensive changes under the hood, and Bottas said the changes carry over to the cockpit. “The biggest difference and learning will be probably be while racing, managing the battery, where you use the deployment, how you strategise your move, whether it’s about overtaking or defending and not running out of battery at the wrong time.”
Lewis Hamilton described the new rules as “no joke” and urged Formula One to ensure they explain to fans the changes, which he said were the biggest in his 20 years in the sport. “We won’t know until we’ve [been] thrown in the deep end in the race to understand that when we overtake someone, how it’s going to affect us,” he said.
Drivers will be expected to “lift and coast” in some parts of the track to recharge the battery, to ensure they can deploy the extra power in the parts of the circuit that make the biggest difference to either track position or lap time, depending on what is most important in the circumstances.
“Turn five here, for example, if you take it flat, or if you lift, it has a massive, compound effect for the rest of the lap,” Hamilton said. “You can do a good lap, but you could be a second down because the deployment is off.”
