“I think there’s a bigger picture”– Oscar Piastri to snub all racing opportunities to focus on Alpine reserve driver role in 2022

Oscar Piastri to pass all the racing opportunities to focus on his role at Alpine in 2022 as he wants to remain in F1 even if he misses the action.

Oscar Piastri recently got announced by Alpine as their new reserve driver for the 2022 season. In his rookie season, the Australian race driver is at the pole position to win the F2 championship with Prema.

Usually, all the reserve drivers participate in other racing competitions. Like Alex Albon in DTM and now Callum Ilott in IndyCar. However, Piastri claims he will not be assigning himself to any competition to focus on his role at Alpine.

“At the moment, I don’t think so,” Piastri said when asked if he would be racing next year. “I want to be focused on getting to F1. I think being in the paddock as often as I can.”

“Being in the paddock with Alpine as much as I can, to me, even if I’m not racing. I think that’s equally if not more beneficial towards my goal of getting to F1.”

“As much as I’m going to miss racing, because I don’t think I will race anything next year. I think there’s a bigger picture to look at and focus on being in F1 firstly,” Piastri added. “I won’t be going back to F2 next year.”

Also read: Alpine race engineer shares details of working relationship with former champion Alonso

Alpine will make Oscar Piastri drive regularly

Piastri, back in September, revealed that he would allow himself to have a year on the sidelines with Alpine already committed to Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso for 2022. However, the French constructors are mapping a plan to give regular driving opportunities to him.

“OK, it’s not going to be racing. But again, if it’s going to be any kind of distraction and mean I miss out on any opportunities with Alpine in the F1 paddock, then it doesn’t particularly interest me to be honest,” Piastri said.

“As weird as this is for me to say, I’d rather not go racing and be fully-focused on my reserve driver role with the aim of trying to get to F1 in the near future, rather than be dabbling everywhere else and taking a bit of my focus off getting to F1.”

Also read: Alpine set a ‘100-race’ target to regularly feature on the podium and win races

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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