In his first year of grand prix racing Oscar Piastri was not only the most impressive rookie in the 2023 field by a wide margin, he also had one of the strongest rookie campaigns of any driver in recent years.
Piastri’s performance over the season was not just admirable for someone who had never raced in Formula 1 before or even participated in a grand prix weekend prior to his debut in Bahrain. It also came after he spent a full year out of racing as Alpine’s reserve driver following his Formula 2 title triumph in 2021.
Although he may not have raced for almost 450 days by the time he made his debut, Piastri at least had the benefit of thousands of kilometres of running in a 2021 Alpine in private tests prior to being poached by McLaren. Ironically, Alpine’s investment in his talent but failure to provide him a race meant their rivals reaped the benefits of all their work.
Piastri arrived into Formula 1 with McLaren on the back foot from the very start of the season. The MCL60 did not appear to be a car worthy of honouring sixty years of McLaren and their legendary achievements and this resulted in a grand prix debut to forget. After all that time waiting to finally race in Formula 1, Piastri was knocked out of Q1 in his first qualifying session and his grand prix debut was spoiled by an electrical problem which effectively ended his evening before he could sink his teeth into the race.
McLaren were still struggling for pace when they arrived in Jeddah, but Piastri managed not only to break out of Q1 for the first time in qualifying but even reach Q3 immediately after. Sadly, any opportunity to get in the thick of the action was taken away when he suffered damage from opening lap contact with Pierre Gasly and he fell to the back after replacing his front wing. But despite this being his first proper race, the rookie pulled of a deeply impressive 49 lap stint on his hard tyres, passing team mate Lando Norris before nailing Logan Sargeant on the final lap with a great move around the outside of turn one. It may have only been for 15th place, but it was an early demonstration of his talent.
As a Melbourne man, the third round at Albert Park was a true home grand prix for Piastri. After narrowly missing out on Q2 and starting from 16th, Piastri rose up to 11th by the second red flag stoppage, then managed to navigate his way successfully through the hectic restart and rise up to eighth, claiming…
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