McLaren CEO Zak Brown has recently made quite surprising comments about Oscar Piastri’s potential in Formula 1.
Oscar Piastri has just a few races to his youngster Formula 1 McLaren CEO Zak Brown has high hopes for the Australian.
Piastri is a talented driver who has enjoyed much success in both Formula 3 and Formula 2, winning the championship in his rookie year in both.
stated Brown that Piastri is a “future world champion”, adding that “he is very focused. He didn’t really make any serious mistakes.”
“(Just) typical frontier exploration, so a weird wheel lock here and there. He hasn’t been on all of these (circuits used so far in 2023) so the early signs are that we have a future world champion in our hands. “
Oscar Piastri’s performances in Formula 1 so far should not deserve such praise.
It was a rough start to the season for McLaren, with the 22-year-old suffering from several mechanical failures that hampered his progress.
But Piastri generally falls short of expectations. Buying out Daniel Ricciardo a year earlier to give the rookie a chance meant that McLaren expected decent success from him right away. Unfortunately this did not happen.
All things considered, Brown exaggerates Piastri with his last remark.
His talent is obvious and it would be reasonable to say that he will have a successful career. But saying he will be a future Formula 1 world champion based on just five races doesn’t make much sense. This seems quite shocking considering the very small sample from which an analysis can be made.
Also, Piastri hasn’t done anything really special this season in the MCL60. It takes 14th place in the table driver rankings after five races, which is not much to do. In the past, we’ve seen young drivers do quite well in cars with some pretty serious flaws. A recent example was George Russell in W13 last season.
Brown’s comments are overly optimistic in the sense that Piastri has done nothing to set himself on the path of becoming a future world champion. This just adds unnecessary pressure to the novice’s shoulders, which may hurt him more than encourage him. Being ahead in the world of sports is not the best solution.
