Mark Webber has praised Oscar Piastri’s coolness under pressure at the Australian Grand Prix to score the first points of what he expects to be a very successful Formula 1 career.
Piastri survived the late carnage of Albert Park to take the flag eighth for his first top-10 finish in F1.
With teammate Lando Norris finishing sixth, McLaren was able to move from a scoreless last up to fifth in the constructors standings.
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The double score came as a relief after a troubled start to the season for the team and rookie Piastri.
The Aussie retired from the first race of the season in Bahrain with a technical failure, while Norris also struggled with engine problems that saw him finish last and two laps down.
In Saudi Arabia both cars picked up damage on the first lap that left them unable to fight for points — a particularly cruel blow after a sensational qualifying effort put Piastri eighth on the grid after his first Q3 appearance, which remains the team’s only top-10 qualifying result so far this year.
But McLaren’s luck finally turned in Australia, where both drivers were battling on the cusp of the top 10 before several smashes in the final laps put both comfortably into the points.
Webber, the former F1 driver who is now Piastri’s manager, said he’s been impressed by the Melburnian’s ability to cruise through his difficult first races to secure points on a chaotic afternoon in Melbourne.
“The rollercoaster is real, of course it’s real,” Webber told the F1 Nation podcast. “You want to be there for the good and the bad moments for him — I have to be, which is part of it.
“But Oscar’s rollercoaster mentally — his emotional regulation is quite extraordinary.
“He can absorb information really, really well, and he needs to, because this is the toughest test in motorsport for a driver.”
Webber said Piastri was improving rapidly despite the generally rough ride of his first month in the sport.
“It’s nice to see someone go through such a phenomenal experience. It’s all new — every day is new for him. Every day he’s getting granularly better, as you do with experience, as … any of us guys that have performed at an elite leave know.
“It’s just experience that you can’t buy, like [in Australia] all those restarts and the qualifying and mixed conditions in practice and stuff and a new circuit. He’s leaving [Melbourne] with a truckload more experience for next year, which is great.”
The rookie’s coolness under pressure and capacity for self-analysis has earnt praise from McLaren, and they’re traits that were reflected in his three successive junior championships in 2019–21.
Piastri has similarly significant targets for Formula 1, according to Webber, whose nine grand prix victories put him behind only three-time champion Jack Brabham on 14 and 1980 champion Alan Jones on 12 among Australians.
“If I talk to him about my career, he falls asleep,” he said. “He’s got big ambitions to try and have a glass of red with me down the line and destroy my trophy cabinet — I’ll be very, very happy if that happens, let me tell you.”
Australian Grand Prix – Race Highlights | 07:03
There are some parallels between Webber and Piastri already, with both having scored their maiden F1 points in Melbourne — Webber with his famous fifth place for the unfancied Minardi team back in 2002.
That was around a month before Piastri’s first birthday, and Webber said the age difference means there are few other likenesses between them.
“Like Ann, my wife, said, he’s the most sophisticated Australian that’s gone overseas,” he said before adding jokingly: “Given she’s comparing him to Daniel (Ricciardo) and me, the bar is very low — the sophistication front of Daniel and me is a very, very low bar!
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“I don’t think there are any comparisons between myself and Oscar.
“It just shows you the generation gap. I think that’s the interesting thing. When you’re talking to Oscar about certain things, some of it’s relevant of course, some of it’s not.
“That’s why you’ve got to work with the engineers as well just to try and work out what’s going in, because the level of professionalism and detail they have now and all the resources they have — the sport just continues to move on, which is great to watch.”
