Oscar Jack Piastri ( , ; born 6 April 2001) is an Australian racing driver who competes in Formula One for McLaren. Piastri has won Formula One Grands Prix across four seasons.
Born and raised in Melbourne, Piastri began his career in radio-controlled racing before moving into karting aged 10, where he won several regional titles. Graduating to junior formulae in 2016, Piastri won his first championship at the 2019 Formula Renault Eurocup with R-ace GP. He then won both the 2020 FIA Formula 3 and 2021 FIA Formula 2 Championships back-to-back with Prema, becoming the sixth driver in history to win the GP2/Formula 2 title in their rookie season. Piastri is the only driver in history to win Formula Renault, Formula Three, and Formula Two—or equivalent—championships in successive seasons.
A member of the Alpine Academy from 2020 to 2022, Piastri signed with McLaren in to partner Lando Norris, following a contract dispute with Alpine. He made his Formula One debut at the , achieving his first career podium in his rookie season at the . Retaining his seat for , Piastri achieved his maiden victory in Hungary, which he repeated in Azerbaijan, becoming the fifth Australian to win a Formula One Grand Prix. In , he took seven further victories, as well as his maiden pole position at the , as he finished third in a title battle with Norris and Max Verstappen.
As of the , Piastri has achieved race wins, pole positions, fastest laps, and podiums in Formula One. Piastri is contracted to remain at McLaren until at least the end of the 2028 season.
Early life
Oscar Jack Piastri was born on 6 April 2001 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. His father, Chris Piastri, is the founder and owner of HP Tuners, an automotive software company; the company sponsored his junior formula career with up to million and continues to sponsor Oscar to this day. He served as Piastri's kart mechanic as he contested national championships in Australia. His mother, Nicole Piastri ( MacFadyen), helped raise him in the suburb of Brighton with his three younger sisters—Hattie, Edie, and Mae. He claims Italian, Yugoslavian, and Chinese heritage from his father, as well as Scottish and Irish from his mother. His bedtime stories frequently consisted of automotive books, prompting his father to buy him a radio-controlled monster truck on a business trip when he was six, which he began racing in his backyard.
Piastri raced competitively with the monster truck in 2007, before moving to race RC cars for 2008 through 2011 from ages seven to ten. He raced competitively aged nine with Remote Control Racing Australia, winning the secondary class of the national championship before moving into kart racing. Aged 14, he moved with his father—who returned to Melbourne six months later—to Hertford, England, to continue his international racing career in Europe. Having been privately educated at Haileybury, he moved to its sister school in Hertford Heath—whose alumni include Stirling Moss—as a boarding pupil on a sports scholarship. By the end of 2015, Piastri began travelling for karting tests and competitions between Italy, France, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, and Portugal from Stansted Airport, costing his father around . In 2019, he was taken under the wing of nine-time Grand Prix winner Mark Webber and his wife, Ann; the former has served as his manager since and negotiated his move to Formula One.
Junior racing career Karting (2011–2016) 2011–2015: State titles in Australia Following his successes in radio-controlled racing, Piastri moved into kart racing in 2011 at the local Oakleigh Go Kart Racing Club (OGKRC) in Clayton South, aged 10. A protégé of two-time Australian Champion James Sera, he began competing for the club that year in an FA Kart chassis. He won his first title two years later: the 2013 CIK Stars of Karting in the Rookies class. In 2014, he won the OGKRC Championship, City of Melbourne Titles, South Australian Championship, and National Sprint Classic Champion of Champions in Junior Clubman—he claimed a prize for the latter. He further claimed runner-up in the Australian National Sprint Championship and the Victorian Championship, before progressing to international competition in the IAME International Final at Le Mans; he finished third on his debut in X30 Junior from twenty-first on the grid. He closed his national career with third in the KF3 Australian Championship—where he was ranked the Top Qualifier—as well as victory in the Victorian Championship, OGKRC's Junior Top Guns, the Gold Coast Race of Stars, and the City of Melbourne Titles again in 2015.
2015–2016: Move to the European scene
With the support of Sera and talent scout Rob McIntyre, Piastri moved to compete in Europe from 2015 onwards with Kosmic. Vroomkart later contrasted his career path to that of Ayrton Senna, having both progressed from RC racing to European karting after a transcontinental move. In KF-Junior, he claimed twelfth in the European Championship round at Portimão—where he finished twenty-sixth overall—and entered one round of the WSK Super Master Series. In 2016, he returned to Australia to claim his third successive City of Melbourne Titles. In Europe, he joined Ricky Flynn Motorsport in OK-Junior, where he finished tenth in the South Garda Winter Cup, twelfth in the WSK Super Master Series, and eighth in the WSK Final Cup. Back-to-back podiums at Portimão saw him claim sixteenth in the European Championship. He qualified fourth for the World Championship at Sakhir after winning his heat; his pre-final saw him drop to eighteenth before recovering to finish sixth overall in his final karting appearance.
Formula 4 (2016–2017) 2016–2017: Junior formulae debut in the UAE Following his sixth-place at the Karting World Championship in OK-Junior, Piastri made his junior formulae debut in the second round of the Formula 4 UAE Championship at Yas Marina with Dragon F4; in a nine-driver field, he claimed sixth, fifth, fourth, and fifth on debut. He then scored a pair of fourth-places at Dubai before claiming two podiums on his return to Yas Marina—his final appearance in the series, ending the season sixth overall having contested 11 of 18 races.
2017: Runner-up in British F4
Piastri moved to the F4 British Championship for 2017 with Arden, owned by Christian Horner—who later revealed he turned down the chance to sign Piastri to the Red Bull Junior Team. He opened his campaign with two podiums at Brands Hatch, which he repeated in the third race at Donington Park, marred by the accident of Billy Monger. After another podium at Thruxton, he claimed his maiden F4 victory in the second race at Oulton Park to move second in the championship. Podiums in each race at Croft and two victories from pole position each at Snetterton and Knockhill consolidated his position. He came under pressure from Logan Sargeant after two retirements at Rockingham. A triple podium at Silverstone, including victory in the final race, extended his advantage, before he clinched the runner-up spot to the second-year Jamie Caroline with top-five finishes at Brands Hatch. He closed the season on 376.5 points—20.5 ahead of Sargeant and 65.5 behind Caroline—with six victories from 15 podiums and six pole positions. He later credited "learning from [his] mistakes in F4" as his greatest lesson in junior formulae.
Formula Renault 2.0 (2017–2019) 2017: Northern European Cup debut Following his British F4 campaign, Piastri debuted in the Formula Renault Northern European Cup at the season-ending Hockenheimring round with Arden. He claimed eighth in both races, ending the season twenty-first overall. He was subsequently invited to attend the Formula Renault 2.0 rookie test at Barcelona-Catalunya, setting the fifth-fastest time.
2018: Podiums in the Eurocup
Piastri remained with Arden for his Eurocup debut in 2018. After claiming sixth and fifth on debut at Paul Ricard, he scored no points at Monza, including a retirement. He finished fourth in the second race at Silverstone before dropping outside of the points again in Monaco. Following his sixth- and ninth-placed finishes at the Red Bull Ring, Piastri achieved his maiden podium finish at Spa-Francorchamps with third in the opening race. Back-to-back points at the Hungaroring extended his run of points finishes to six races, which ended in the first race at the Nürburgring; he claimed seventh in race two. With podiums in both races at the Hockenheimring—finishing third and second—he surpassed Alex Peroni for eighth in the championship, which he retained amidst non-scoring races at the season-ending Barcelona-Catalunya round. He closed his campaign with 110 points—165.5 behind champion Max Fewtrell—and three podiums.
2019: Maiden title
Piastri—now competing under a British licence—joined reigning champions for the 2019 Eurocup. His campaign opened with eighteenth and fourth at Monza. He took his maiden victory from pole position in the first race at Silverstone, which he repeated in the second. He claimed fourth and fifth in Monaco, before returning to the podium with second at Paul Ricard, where he finished sixth in race two. He closed Victor Martins's championship lead to two points with victory in the opening race at Spa-Francorchamps and levelled the standings with his fourth-place in race two. He opened a 40-point advantage by winning both races at the Nürburgring from pole. A formation lap crash at the Hungaroring after aquaplaning reduced the gap by 12.5 points with Martins's victory, which he mitigated by winning the second race from pole. Martins closed his lead to 5.5 points with three consecutive wins from pole at the penultimate Barcelona-Catalunya and Hockenheimring rounds as Piastri finished fifth, third, and second, the latter after an early battle for the lead—his second-place in race two extended it by eight. At Yas Marina, Piastri held off the late advances of Martins to win the opening race, meaning he would clinch the title by finishing seventh or higher in the final race, irrespective of other results. With fourth-place, Piastri clinched his first junior formulae championship by 7.5 points to Martins, having achieved seven wins from 11 podiums and five pole positions. Bruce Williams of Auto Action described it as a "a considerable step towards a Formula One career".
FIA Formula 3 (2020) In 2018, Piastri partook in the GP3 Series post-season test at Yas Marina with Trident. He returned for the post-season test with reigning FIA Formula 3 champions Prema. Now managed by Mark Webber and a member of the Renault Sport Academy, he signed with Prema for alongside former F4 rival Logan Sargeant and reigning Formula Regional European champion Frederik Vesti. The season was delayed and shortened due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Stating that "fighting for the championship definitely is not out of the question", Piastri qualified third on debut in Spielberg; avoiding damage in a first-corner collision with polesitter Sebastián Fernández, he passed Lirim Zendeli at Ams Ag to claim a debut feature race victory, before finishing eighth in the reverse-grid sprint. At the second Spielberg round, he claimed fourth in the curtailed feature and fifth in the sprint to retain his championship lead over Vesti and Sargeant. Back-to-back second-placed finishes in Budapest—as well as in the Silverstone feature—increased his advantage to 25 points, prior to losing eight with a drag reduction system failure in the latter sprint. He fell a point behind Sargeant after claiming seventh and sixth at the second Silverstone round following reliability issues in qualifying, which he retained in Barcelona by recovering from a sixth-placed feature to win the sprint, courtesy of four opening-lap overtakes.