Joel Embiid Declares “Oscar Piastri is a Future World Champion”

Starting from second on the grid behind Charles Leclerc, Oscar Piastri put an extraordinary performance on display to take his second career win in Azerbaijan. This puts him on equal footing with his teammate Lando Norris, who also has two career wins despite being in the sport for much longer than Piastri.

This remarkable performance by Piastri has even left the Cameroonian-American basketball player Joel Embiid in awe and he has predicted the Australian will become a world champion in the future. And it really was a championship-level performance from Piastri.

Having failed to pass Leclerc in the opening stint, he had to go for a move at the start of the second stint and he did. After both drivers had switched to hard tires, Piastri made an incredible lunge on the Monagasque to snatch the lead.

After the overtake, he endured a relentless charge from Leclerc and defended for his life until the Ferrari driver’s tires started to go off. After the race finished, Embiid took to X (formerly Twitter) and shared his reaction to what he had just witnessed. “Oscar Piastri is a future world champion,” he wrote.

Embiid was also shocked at the crash between Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez on the penultimate lap of the race and summed up his reaction in another post by saying, “W** WAS SAINZ DOING?”