“A Childhood Dream Turned Reality”- Oscar Piastri Reflects Back on Bittersweet Experience After Horror Start to Life in F1

After spending a year on the sidelines as Alpine’s reserve driver, Oscar Piastri finally got his shot as an F1 driver with McLaren at Sunday’s Bahrain GP. The Aussie driver is one of the biggest talents in the sport, and joined the Woking-based squad this season, replacing compatriot Daniel Ricciardo.

Competing in F1 is the dream for any up-and-coming racing driver and Piastri fulfilled that dream yesterday. Unfortunately, his debut race in F1 turned out to be a nightmare through no fault of his own. 14 laps into the Bahrain GP, Piastri complained of gearbox issues in his car, after which his race engineer asked him to pit.

Piastri boxed, and the crew changed his steering wheel, but he could not get going again. The entire team waited for several seconds, but when the cameras caught Piastri shaking his head, it was evident that his race was over. Soon afterwards, the Melbourne-born driver’s race officially came to an end as he climbed out of the car and walked towards the back of McLaren’s garage.

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Oscar Piastri looking back on positives in Bahrain

Despite retiring just 14 laps into his first ever F1 outing, Piastri wants to focus only on the positives. The 21-year-old feels that his race was going ‘reasonably well’ up until those gearbox issues showed up, and he trusts the team to fix it ahead of the coming round.

On social media, Piastri spoke about how amazing it was to finally make his F1 debut. “A childhood dream turned reality,” Piastri wrote.

He added that although it wasn’t the weekend he was looking for, he will work hard with McLaren to figure out the problem and bounce back stronger.

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Disastrous opening weekend for McLaren

There wasn’t much optimism in the McLaren camp heading into the opening round in Bahrain. Their car did not show a lot of pace in pre-season and their qualifying runs weren’t particularly impressive either.

Piastri could muster only a P18 spot on the grid, whereas Lando Norris dragged the car to eleventh place. In the race, not only did Piastri suffer a horror outing, but Norris too, had a difficult time on track. His car also faced multiple issues throughout the race for which he had to make several unplanned pit-stops.

These stops affected Norris’ chances of charging up the field, and the Bristol-born driver finished 17th. McLaren will be hoping to solve their problems before Norris and Piastri take to the track once again in two weeks time, in Jeddah.