Oscar Piastri has admitted that the contractual saga in mid-2022 that concluded with him leaving Alpine to move to McLaren in Formula 1 was a “tense moment”.
Despite clinching the Formula 3 and 2 championships in successive years, Piastri was made to spend a season on the sidelines as Alpine’s reserve driver in 2022.
Piastri has conceded that seeing his route up the racing ladder stagnate was tough to endure, despite revealing that the period taught him some valuable lessons.
“It was certainly a tough time,” Piastri said on F1’s Off The Grid video. “Naturally, as a racing driver, you want to go racing.
“That year, not racing was tough, definitely. It did allow me to view some things from the outside a little bit easier: being part of a weekend, understanding what media commitments are going to be like, what the sponsor commitments are going to be like, just the general rhythm of the season. I learned a few things about that, but it was a tough time.
“I always kind of took pride in the fact that I was doing everything that I could, and I was always confident that something would come up.”
When Fernando Alonso announced a shock move to Aston Martin during the summer break in 2022, Alpine soon publicised that Piastri would partner Esteban Ocon.
But Piastri shut that down in a post on social media that went viral, with it soon materialising that the Australian had penned a multi-year deal to race with McLaren.
And although Alpine attempted to take the case to the Contract Recognition Board, the CRB ruled that McLaren possessed the rights to Piastri’s services from 2023.
“I kind of knew that it was going to be a pretty big story,” he recounted.
“There were reasons for doing that, it wasn’t just me going out of my ways to announce to the world that I’m not racing.
“I mean, I certainly look back on it now with some laughs. Definitely at the time, it wasn’t so funny.
“It obviously went to the CRB. Things were in my favour, but that was another pretty tense moment.
“That (his debut with McLaren) was an incredible moment. Then also kind of hits you that everything you’ve done previously almost doesn’t matter now.”
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