Alain Prost makes new Oscar Piastri claim after Alpine to McLaren transfer

Alain Prost has claimed he had to convince Renault to sign Oscar Piastri to its junior programme well before he came close to Formula 1.

Piastri and the Renault-owned Alpine team had an acrimonious parting during the 2022 season after failing to present the then-aspiring racer with a valid contract.

Alain Prost: Alpine didn’t want to sign Oscar Piastri

Championship leader Piastri arrived in F1 in 2023 following an especially bright junior career that netted him three championship wins in as many years: Formula Renault, Formula 3, and Formula 2.

That saw him signed to Alpine’s junior driver academy for 2020, progressing through that system to become reserve driver during the early part of 2022 after the squad was able to find a race seat for him following his F2 title.

He was ultimately named as Fernando Alonso’s replacement for the 2023 season, prompting an awkward battle for his services after the Australian had signed a contract with McLaren.

It played out that Alpine had never secured Piastri’s signature and its claims to his services – and therefore the announcement of him as an Alpine race driver for 2023 – were unfounded.

Having fumbled the bright youngster on the cusp of his graduation to F1, four-time world champion Alain Prost has now claimed that he had to talk Alpine into bringing the Melburninan into the driver programme in the first place.

“I know Oscar much better because I was the one to push Renault to bring him in, in the academy a long time ago; they did not want to,” Prost said at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

“I saw him driving in Formula 3, or even before, and then Formula 2.

“I like the way he behaves, a little bit like me, thinking about when to do the right manoeuvre for overtaking and being a little bit more clever.

“I like him,” he added. “You never know what’s going to happen, but this type of driver, normally, they can make a progression. Some, if it’s only the driving skill, sometimes they are on a plateau.

“I don’t know Lando [Norris] very much, but honestly, for this type of championship, the best should win.”

While Prost sees shades of himself in Piastri, the young Australian has admitted that he considers himself in a similar vein to the Frenchman who claimed 51 race wins.

“I would say much, much closer to Prost in that side of things,” he told Australian publication Speedcafe when asked if he viewed his driving style more akin to McLaren legends Prost or Ayrton Senna.

“I think with the amount of downforce we have on the cars these days, I think you have to drive them quite straight.

“And with the tyres we have as well, they just don’t like being sideways, so you have to always adapt to what you’ve got around you.

“For me, that’s how I tried to look at my driving style. I think I have a natural way of driving a car, let’s say, but I feel like one of my strengths is being able to adapt to different cars quite quickly.

“All the junior cars that I drove all had pretty different characteristics,” he added.

“When you look at some of those cars that I drove, the F2 car probably suited me quite nicely with some of the characteristics there.

“In F1, there’s certain characteristics that are nice and some that are not so nice, but you’ve got to be able to drive with all of them.”

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Piastri’s measured approach since arriving in F1 quickly earned him admirers within both McLaren and the broader paddock, while his consistency saw him become the only driver to complete every racing lap of the F1 2024 season.

He is currently on a 38-race points-scoring streak, a run that began at the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix.

It’s the third-longest string of consecutive points-paying results in Formula 1 history, behind only Lewis Hamilton’s 48 (Britain 2018-Bahrain 2020) and Max Verstappen’s 43 (Emilia Romagna 2022-Saudi Arabia 2024).

Piastri is currently locked in a tense championship battle with his McLaren team-mate, Lando Norris, the duo having won nine of the 12 races so far this season.

Five of those have gone the way of the Australian, though he lost out to Norris after a picking up a penalty during the British Grand Prix.

It sees the pair separated by just eight points as McLaren runs away from the pack in the Constructors’ Championship – the Woking squad’s tally is more than double Mercedes, its nearest rival.

While not yet a two-horse race between Piastri and Norris, the title battle looks set to eventually be duked out between just those two.

With both pursuing a maiden championship – and McLaren’s first drivers’ title since Lewis Hamilton in 2008 – neither will enjoy preferential treatment.

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown has insisted that both drivers will be treated as equitably, leaving the destination of the drivers’ title exclusively in the hands of his drivers.

“Race each other hard, race each other clean, and try and get as many points on the board for the team,” Brown said of the rules of engagement between Piastri and Norris.

“Then it’s up to them to decide who is in front of who.”

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