While McLaren and Ferrari fought for the Constructors’ title only last year, Oscar Piastri and Carlos Sainz have had tussles ever since the Aussie debuted in F1. One of their major skirmishes came in Belgium in 2023. Last season, they had another collision in Miami when Sainz lost the rear of his Ferrari while attempting to overtake the Australian for P4 into turn 17.
Sainz was deemed at fault for the incident as he picked up a five-second time penalty and one penalty point on his super license. That said, Piastri would not have felt that justice was served as his car was badly damaged and he was forced into making a pit stop that dropped him down the order.
He eventually finished the race in 13th while the #55 driver finished in fifth after accounting for his penalty. With Piastri coming off worse against Sainz last year, some of the Australian fans ahead of this weekend’s race at Albert Park predicted that the McLaren driver may consider the Spaniard his biggest enemy.
The conversation began during a fan event when Piastri was asked about his best enemy. While the 23-year-old began to think about the same, some of the crowd shouted “Carlos”. Piastri acknowledged that they had their moments on track last year, but insisted that they had made up.
“Carlos and I had our moments on track but we’ve made up now,” Piastri said. “We actually flew together to Bahrain for pre-season testing”. However, he was cautious to label their changed relationship as becoming friends.
oscar: my best enemy?
crowd: carlos!
oscar: (nods) carlos and i had our moments on track but we’ve made up now. we actually flew together to bahrain for pre-season testing so we’ve become… i still don’t know if friends is the right word for anyone on the grid, but NOT enemies. pic.twitter.com/Y2MIJnkEdu— yoyo (@williamssainz) March 14, 2025
“I still don’t know if friends is the right word for anyone on the grid, but NOT enemies,” he said about his relationship with Sainz now. Considering how fierce the competition is in F1, it makes sense why the Melbourne-born driver would be hesitant to label any of the drivers as friends.
But when it comes to his relationship with Sainz in particular, they indeed do seem to have come a long way after they had an angry exchange back in 2023 following a first-lap crash at Spa.
Both Piastri and Sainz blamed each other for the collision
As it so often happens in F1, whenever a collision takes place, rarely any driver admits fault. A similar incident transpired back in 2023 at the Belgian GP when Sainz and Piastri made contact heading into the first corner, which ended both their races.
The Spaniard claimed that it was Piastri’s supposed lack of experience that resulted in them colliding as he had never seen any driver make an attempt to overtake in that fashion into turn one. However, Piastri was going to have none of that.
The Australian stated that he had no idea what Sainz was doing and that the former Ferrari man “turned in like [he] didn’t exist”. However, since it was a first-lap incident between the two drivers when all others were scrambling for positions, the stewards deemed it as just a racing incident and did not penalize either of them.
Sadly for fans, it seems unlikely that the two will have any more such battles after Sainz moved to Williams — which is likely to be in the midfield — this year. Meanwhile, Piastri seems set to fight for wins and maybe the championship at the front.
