Oscar Piastri reveals sign of Lewis Hamilton ‘respect’ pointed out by Mark Webber

Oscar Piastri and Lewis Hamilton made contact in Monza.
Oscar Piastri’s manager Mark Webber reckons the young Australian has earned the respect of Lewis Hamilton following their crash at Monza last year.
Hamilton was attempting an overtake on Piastri when the two made contact but Webber believes the Mercedes driver’s reaction afterwards showed his level of respect for the McLaren man.
Mark Webber notes Lewis Hamilton behaviour towards Oscar Piastri
The Monza incident was the first of two coming togethers between the pair but Piastri revealed his manager and mentor Webber said the way Hamilton reacted afterwards showed the level of respect he had for the 22-year-old.
“I think it was Mark actually said to me, after Monza, ‘if he didn’t think much of you, he wouldn’t have come and said anything,’” Piastri told the Beyond the Grid podcast. “I’m going to trust Mark on that one. I feel like it’s a good bit of advice or wisdom.
“Lewis has not had that many incidents in his life so it could be easy for him just to brush it off but he had a lot of respect. Of course, I wish that we didn’t crash in the first place, but I had a lot of respect for him being like that.”
Aside from the crashes, Piastri did admit it was a little surreal to line up alongside Hamilton for the first time.
“I’ve crashed with Lewis a couple of times, I feel like both of them weren’t particularly my fault, but I don’t know, maybe he just doesn’t like me,” he joked. “With that much experience, you know, that they’re going to put the car in the right place, the strategy that they’re going to work with their team is going to be good.
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“You’ve got to be on your A-game trying to beat them. There’s also kind of the mentality of you can’t treat them any differently and you can’t have that prejudice because then you’re going to race some differently.
“You might race a bit softly, might race a bit harder, both of which can be bad. So you kind of just have to treat them as somebody else and I think now that I’ve been in F1 for a year, it’s much easier to do that.
“Certainly Saudi here last year, I think I lined up alongside Lewis on the grid and I remember someone showed me the start graphic after the race and I was like that’s my second F1 race alongside Lewis Hamilton. Last year, I was watching him line up on the grid and now I’m sitting alongside him, that’s pretty damn cool.”
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