With a commanding drive at the Miami GP, Oscar Piastri secured the sixth win of his F1 career last weekend. The cherry on top was that he completed a hattrick of Grand Prix victories—winning Bahrain, Jeddah, and Miami consecutively—making him the first McLaren driver to do so since Mika Hakkinen in 1998.
The Aussie’s race-winning drive from fourth on the grid not only earned him Driver of the Day but also solidified his title bid. As things stand, he is 16 points clear of his teammate, Lando Norris who sits second in the drivers’ championship.
Naturally, the 24-year-old has stamped his authority in the paddock and certainly within the Woking-based team. But only a year ago, it seemed as though he would be designated to play second fiddle to Norris—who was being touted as the de facto leader at McLaren and a title favorite going into this season.
But for the Philadelphia 76ers’ Joel Embiid, it was Piastri who had championship glory written all over him. Last year, after the Azerbaijan GP weekend, where Piastri sealed a stellar win over Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, Embiid came onto his social media channels to anoint the Australian as a future champion.
The 31-year-old wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “Oscar Piastri is a future world champion,” in response to the #81 driver bagging his second career Grand Prix win.
Oscar Piastri is a future world champion
— Joel Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) September 15, 2024
Piastri returned the compliment to the Cameroonian-American professional Basketball player with his trademark Aussie humor. He wrote back, “Not at basketball. Need a coaching session off you.”
With a quarter of the 2025 season now concluded, McLaren will have to have a sit-down before heading into the European leg of the championship. Piastri now holds a clear advantage over Norris and the team will have to decide if they want to back the Australian for his maiden title win over the British racing ace.
After a few close skirmishes last season, like at the Italian GP, McLaren have maintained that both their drivers are free to race each other under the ‘Papaya Rules‘ edict. However, when push comes to shove, the team will need to prioritize the driver who has the best shot at the title by deploying team orders where required.
In that sense, all is not lost yet for Norris who can still put in a solid comeback to claw back points to both Piastri and defending champion Max Verstappen. The #4 driver has shown amazing one-lap pace—evidenced by his front-row start in Miami on Sunday—but still needs to work on his race craft when going up against drivers like the Dutchman.
Despite a strong qualifying result, Norris fell to sixth at the start after a turn 1 incident with Verstappen. This allowed Piastri to battle with Kimi Antonelli and Verstappen to assume the lead whilst Norris could only muster a second-placed finish at the chequered flag allowing Piastri to pull six more points on him in the standings.
This is an area that Norris will have to work on if he wants parity and even precedence over Piastri as the season progresses. However, as things stand, Embiid’s prediction seems set to come true in 2025, considering the kind of purple patch the Aussie is enjoying.
