Oscar Piastri caught in a spin as Australian F1 GP curse returns to haunt hometown hero…..read more
In a wet field of grass there Oscar Piastri sat, the man in orange marooned by his spinning wheels. The Australian driver – after a rapid rise in Formula One – was all of a sudden stationary.
The expectations of F1 mean that those not moving forward are going backward. Sure enough, the hometown hero tumbled down the order, from a podium sure-thing, cascading through the points to a place among the back markers. And as his position sank, so too did the hearts of local fans, in a flash of disappointment now all too familiar.
No Australian has stood on the podium at his home grand prix across a decade in Adelaide and now three in Victoria. For most of a compelling opening weekend of Formula One, Melbourne’s best driver looked certain to end that run.
McLaren appeared a class above the rest of the field in the middle stages of Sunday’s race. For a moment, Piastri even looked sharper than his team-mate Lando Norris, the pole-sitter, early leader and eventual winner.
On a drying track, the heavens seemed to have the Australian’s back too. He skipped past defending driver’s champion Max Verstappen and onto the rear wing of Norris. But in Formula One, the team principal is a power higher than God.
The Australian confirmed afterwards a 2025 edition “papaya rules” were in place, and at that stage he was not allowed to challenge. “By the time we were free to race, I’d killed my front left a little bit getting to the back of Lando, so by that point, there wasn’t much I could do,” Piastri said.
Given the speed of the orange cars, the approach of McLaren chief executive Zak Brown could determine this year’s Formula One champion. Piastri is sensible enough to play down the controversy of team dynamics, saying afterwards it was a “minor moment”. But he added he did not understand the instructions.
“Today’s race and the circumstances were pretty extreme, approaching back-markers, [with] one dry line, not knowing there was supposed to be rain to come,” Piastri said. “So I’ll speak to the team and try and understand better what the thinking was, but I think it’s always clear that those kind of calls can come in either direction.”
After losing precious seconds trying to go forward out of the grass, the Australian – who would recover and make a series of daring passes in the dying stages to finish in ninth place – finally found traction by reversing his McLaren out.
“I tried to go forwards, and couldn’t,” he said. “Good thing I spent some time in the off-season trying to learn how to reverse a tractor on Jeremy Clarkson’s farm. I think it came in handy today.”
Piastri had visited the British TV presenter’s property late last year, underlining his growing status in the world of Formula One. And there is no place that highlights his popularity like Melbourne.
The 23-year-old grew up 15 minutes away in Brighton and noticed the thousands of orange ponchos that populated the grandstands on a day that – despite incessant rain – secured a record crowd for the four-day event of 465,498.
