Oscar Piastri clarifies reduced Mark Webber trackside role in F1 2026

Oscar Piastri has said his manager, Mark Webber, remains “very much involved” in his career, and confirmed he would reduce his trackside presence this season.

Reports emerged that Piastri added former race engineer Pedro Matos, with whom he won the Formula 2 title in 2021, to his inner circle ahead of the new season.

Oscar Piastri confirms Mark Webber reduced trackside presence

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Piastri has driven under the management of the former Red Bull and Williams driver, alongside his partner, Ann Neal, through a significant portion of his career to date, with Webber having provided trackside support at the majority of races in his stint in Formula 1.

PlanetF1.com understands that, with this change, it will be Matos to take on a trackside role at most, if not all, races in 2026, with Webber attending selected rounds this time around.

It is understood Matos has not been employed directly by McLaren, but will be working with Piastri to offer both his expertise and support over race weekends, along with the Australian continuing to work with prominent sports psychologist, Emma Murray.

Piastri mounted his first Formula 1 title challenge last season, with his form having dipped in the latter stages of the campaign, losing out to Lando Norris and Max Verstappen having held a 34-point lead at the two-thirds stage of the season.

With Formula 1 resetting its regulations ahead of the new year, and Piastri looking to better his McLaren teammate as his experience grows in the category, a change has come to shake up how his weekends look.

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Asked if there was anything that was behind this change to his team, Piastri told PlanetF1.com and others: “There wasn’t anything specific. Just, you know, we made a decision for things to look a bit different.

“Mark is still very much involved, and I’ve been in contact with him a lot over the last few weeks. He just won’t be trackside as much anymore.

“So, that’s really the extent of it. There’s nothing specific that triggered it.”

Piastri and McLaren have completed their final pre-season running in Bahrain, with McLaren having topped the overall lap count over the six allotted days, notching 817 laps of the Bahrain International Circuit.

That will provide the team with plenty of data ahead of the new season and, while CEO Zak Brown predicts Ferrari and Mercedes to potentially be ahead come the Australian Grand Prix, McLaren should be among the frontrunners.

For Piastri, though, he has spent time adapting to his new machinery, in a radically different set of regulations, which in turn has created a different driving experience.

“It’s definitely been a learning curve,” he explained. “There are still some things that we need to do as drivers that are certainly very different to what we had to do last year.

“But, I think the kind of optimisation around driving that way… firstly, as drivers, I think we’re getting our heads around the new things we need to do. And as teams, [we are] making accommodations for having to drive a certain way now.

“I think it has improved. It still is very different to what we have before, but I think, naturally, we’ve all probably found performance, and just with performance, it’s made some creature comforts a little bit nicer as well.

“I think we are making progress. Let’s see what Melbourne’s like.”

Additional reporting by Mat Coch and Thomas Maher

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