How Piastri is already showing signs of being a true F1 great

“The future is his.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, again, saying exactly how it is. In this case, regarding the coming years of Oscar Piastri in Formula 1.

Specifically, Stella was answering a question regarding how Piastri might react to the expected team orders push from McLaren to support Lando Norris’s 2024 title bid.

“I think it will be [OK],” Stella said at the end of his post-race media briefing at his home Italian race, where he knows exactly the right bakery just outside the Monza track to visit for pre-event treats for his team.

“If the things we say are sensible according to the principles like fairness, because it’s also fairness that [means] if you support your team-mate winning the championship, for the team it’s a big boost. If we win both championships it’s a massive boost and the benefits for a big boost of the team, even if he is the other driver.

“Because we don’t have to forget that Oscar is in the middle of his second season in Formula 1. The future is his, it’s Oscar’s. He needs to make sure that when it’s the time to support, he puts the support he gives to the team or to Lando, [so that in the future] for him [it’s] an investment.”

It’s therefore clear, in the aftermath of that lap one pass on his team-mate at Monza, a race McLaren surely should’ve won 1-2, how the orange team is working hard to keep Piastri and his camp onside during what is a delicate phase in their relationship.

The way the 2024 season started – with Red Bull dominating and McLaren seemingly having not progressed from how it ended 2023, as generally Max Verstappen’s squad’s closest challenger – meant logically any title push was unlikely so as a result a team orders discussion would have been far down the list of priorities.

But given how Monza played out, as much as Stella himself is understood to dislike having to discuss them publicly, getting all controllable elements for a title tilt in line is McLaren’s clear imperative heading to F1’s latest street track run now coming in Baku and Singapore.

Thanks to F1’s hefty calendar size these days, everyone down to George Russell in eighth is still mathematically in the hunt. While Norris is 62 points adrift of Verstappen in second, Piastri is 106 back in fourth. Charles Leclerc and Ferrari remain dark prancing horses in…