Australian F1 superstar Oscar Piastri could easily have been lining up on the Bathurst 1000 grid this weekend if a sliding doors moment had been different early in his career.
Piastri, born in Melbourne in 2001, began his racing career in karting before moving to Europe to compete in youth formulas.
He achieved consecutive victories in Formula Renault Eurocup (2019), FIA Formula 3 (2020) and FIA Formula 2 (2021) championships.
Piastri made his Formula One debut with McLaren in 2023, taking two podiums in his rookie season and has since improved his tally to two wins and nine podiums to help McLaren rise to the top of the constructors’ championship.
But with the competition extremely tight for F1 spots, Piastri first thirsted for the roar of the V8 Supercars at Mount Panorama.
Piastri is a rising star in Formula One and has helped take McLaren to the top of the constructors’ championship.
Had Piastri not found success in Europe in his teens, he could easily have been on the grid at Bathurst.
Speaking ahead of this year’s Monte Carlo GP, Piastri revealed that when he left for Europe as a teenager, he had every intention of returning home to compete in the Supercars Championship if it didn’t work out.
“When I went to Europe, my first goal in motorsport was to become a professional and get paid to drive racing cars,” he said. news corporation.
‘To put it plainly, I didn’t really care what car it was. Of course, I would set my sights on F1 if I could, but my first goal was just to be a professional in motorsport, whether it was in GT cars or whatever in Europe or in Supercars in Australia.
“So I knew going to Europe, once I got to a certain point, I knew that even if I didn’t make it to F1 here, I would have made a name for myself in some junior categories.” categories so that there are opportunities elsewhere.
“So it was always kind of a backup plan to come back to Australia if it didn’t work out. But once I got on a roll, of course in F1, the sky was really the limit.”
Piastri was identified as a prodigious talent from a young age and former Australian F1 champion Mark Webber (left) took him under his wing.
Although Piastri grew up karting, he was willing to drive almost anything for a chance at a professional career.
In retrospect, Piastri had little to worry about and worked his way up in F1 during his formative years.
However, he has revealed that not everything was easy, as his resume might suggest.
The year before his 2019 Formula Renault victory, he faced challenges and failed to make significant progress in the category with Arden, a team established by Red Bull’s Christian Horner.
This situation led him to wonder if he was wasting his opportunity to succeed in single-seater racing.
“There was probably one season in Formula Renault, the first one in 2018, where it was a difficult season,” he said.
“That year there weren’t many trophies. I had to take some school exams. It was a pretty busy year outside of racing.
‘And compared to my standards and what I wanted from myself, I just wasn’t as good as I wanted. “I never really asked myself if I would stay in Europe, but it’s certainly like ‘I can’t afford to keep having this’ because the opportunity runs out very quickly.”
Red Bull missed the chance to sign Piastri, a decision Christian Horner regrets.
This pivotal moment led to the Australian transitioning to the R-ace GP team, where he took the championship the following year, paving his way into F1.
Although this meant delaying his ambitions to compete in Supercars at Bathurst, the 23-year-old has no regrets about the direction he chose.
“Once I had the pleasure of racing in Europe and competing against the best guys in the world, on the best tracks in the world, that’s what I wanted to do after that moment,” he said.
“Of course, moving to Europe was a big decision, but I knew I wanted to try to compete against the best.
‘Many people like motorsports for different reasons. Some people like cars and then they like racing, some people like racing and then they like cars. Some people just like racing or don’t like cars.
And I think I like cars, don’t get me wrong. But I really enjoyed the competition. I was competing with others and myself to try to do better.
‘I always played other sports before competing and I just loved the competition rather than necessarily specifically the sport. So for me, once I tried that, that’s what I knew I wanted to do.”
