Importance of being wanted Webber shares insight into Piastris thinking during Alpine/McLaren contract battle

Oscar Piastris’ manager Mark Webber has offered an insight into how the young Australian handled last summer’s high-profile Alpine-McLaren contract dispute, which eventually saw Piastri cleared to sign with the Woking team for 2023.

Piastri won the FIA ​​F3 and F2 titles at his first attempts before Alpine appointed him as reserve driver for the 2022 season. When Sebastian Vettel announced his retirement in July last year, two-time champion Fernando Alonso then signed a deal to replace the German at Aston Martin, freeing up the seat at Alpine.

The Anglo-French outfit announced that Piastri would take the seat, but he publicly denied this as he wanted to seal a move to McLaren.

EXCLUSIVE: Piastri joins McLaren, leaves Alpine and makes F1 debut

A tug-of-war ensued between Alpine, who claimed they had a solid deal with Piastr, and McLaren, who wanted the young driver to replace compatriot Daniel Ricciardo for 2023. F1’s contract recognition board ultimately ruled in favor of McLaren. .

Former F1 driver Webber, who is Piastris’ manager, explained Speedcafe that throughout the episode Piastri was actually quite relaxed.”

He continued: “Of course, he was ironically showing as much loyalty as he could under the circumstances, because he was waiting for answers, and he was the most loyal of the whole situation.

And all the other shareholders and people who had been there since he was 8 were certainly much less patient. But Oscar wanted to be as faithful as possible and it was still quite challenging what the future looks like.

“Then McLaren obviously said they wanted to make a change, whether it was Oscar or whoever was the main thing, we couldn’t have had an Aussie on the grid next year. Who knows?

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Webber declined to share the details of McLaren’s approach to Piatri, but he explained that the deal was: a great opportunity for Oscar to hit the ground running. Of course, he was aware of Daniel’s replacement [Ricciardo], definitely he was. He knows if it wasn’t him, it could have been someone else.

He knows he should have competed this year [2022]. That’s the big killer here. He did a few days of testing, but racing drivers have had to compete and it was really painful [him] They [McLaren] wanted him. That’s the first thing. It makes quite a difference. It is important to be wanted and to be quite clear and open about the plan.

Piastri will make his F1 debut for McLaren at the Bahrain GP in March.