Alpine’s reserve driver Oscar Piastri admits that he wants to spend the upcoming season following two-time Champion Fernando Alonso’s lead.
Piastri took the world of motorsports by storm in 2021, winning the Formula 2 Championship in his rookie season. It was his third Title in three years, as he was coming on the back of winning the Formula Renault Eurocup in 2019 followed by the Formula 3 Championship in 2020.
F2 Champions aren’t allowed to remain in the series after their Title winning campaign. As a result, Piastri had to find a seat elsewhere in order to race in 2022. He was linked to an early F1 move to Alfa Romeo, which many people felt he completely deserved.
However, the Swiss team decided to go for his F2 Title rival Guanyu Zhou, and Piastri was left without a seat. Instead of opting to compete in some other racing venture, the Aussie driver decided to gain ‘work experience’ by remaining in the F1 paddock.
Piastri will spend 2022 as the reserve and development driver for Alpine F1 team, and vows to make use of his time learning how things in F1 work. In particular, he wants to follow in two-time World Champion, Fernando Alonso’s footsteps.
The 20-year old is aiming for a full-time seat in the sport ahead of the 2023 season, and will spend the coming year doing his best to get there.
Also read: Lando Norris on why McLaren fell off in the latter half of the 2021 F1 season
Oscar Piastri reveals his plans for the upcoming F1 season
Piastri was on the pit-wall with Alpine at the Qatar GP last November, gaining insights of being a part of an F1 weekend. The Melbourne born driver admitted that his weekend in Lusail taught him a lot about being in the sport.
“Obviously it was a great weekend for the team with the podium for Fernando and fifth for Esteban,” he said.
“I did a similar kind of thing in Turkey last year. I sat in on all the engineering briefings and did a bunch of media stuff as well, so I learned quite a bit from the engineering side of things in the meetings and stuff.”
“You can use that to sort of further develop, mainly for my own F1 tests. Also just seeing the way Fernando and Esteban go about trying to improve themselves and the car, especially, that was definitely something I can take.”
“For me, being able to see Fernando, a two-time World Champion…it’s probably a good idea that I follow his lead a little bit.” Piastri concluded.
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