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After a thrilling 2025 season where he came incredibly close to winning the world championship, Oscar Piastri has his eyes on the prize going forward.
While almost everyone within the McLaren paddock would have celebrated Lando Norris’ championship win last year, it would have been a bittersweet feeling for Oscar Piastri.
In just his third season in Formula 1, Piastri managed to get very close to winning the world championship, only to fall short towards the end of the season.
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Mark Webber and Piastri clashed over McLaren’s management of the title fight between him and Norris, with Webber believing Piastri wasn’t prioritised the right way by the team.
For his part, Piastri has kept his head down. But the Australian driver does believe a world championship is there for the taking in the future.
READ MORE: Lando Norris says he and Oscar Piastri are now paying the price for McLaren winning 2025 F1 titles
Oscar Piastri expects to win a world championship, but knows he needs things to go in his favour
Speaking on the High Performance Racing podcast, Oscar Piastri talked about the possibility of winning a world championship in the future.
While that is undoubtedly the goal for the Australian driver, he wants to take a realistic approach to his ambition and ensure that he has all the tools, like a good car, available to him before he begins seriously pursuing a world title.
“I think so, yes. I may be a little bit different in that I don’t spend that much time thinking about the hypotheticals. I want to become a Formula 1 world champion, but I try and look at it from a very realistic point of view.
“That’s a combination. I need to do my job. But in this sport, for good or bad, if you don’t have the car to achieve it, you can kind of believe you’re going to be an F1 world champion all you want.
“But if you don’t have the best, or one of the best cars, then you can believe that it’s going to happen all you want, but it’s probably not going to happen.
“For me, that’s more where I come from. That sense of realism. I’m a big believer in trying to do the most with what you’ve got.”
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Oscar Piastri reveals when he knew he could ‘realistically’ compete for an F1 world championship
Adding to the conversation, Piastri revealed that it was the 2025 Australian Grand Prix where he realised he could fight for the world championship if he did things right.
“I left that weekend (Melbourne 2025) knowing that I had taken a big step forward from the year before. I knew I still had some steps and improvements to make.
“But I knew that I was really close to just being able to kind of maximise my potential… After Melbourne in 2025, I knew within myself, and especially after China, when I won, I knew that as long as I got close to my potential, that I could win races.
“A big part of that comes from the car you’re in. Especially in the first half of the season, I knew that if I got close to my potential, then realistically, I probably only had to beat Lando. That was it. It’s not an easy task, but it’s a little bit easier when you’ve only got to worry about one or two people.
“Obviously, Max was back in the picture later in the year. But 2025 was the first time in F1 where I went, ‘If I can get close to my potential here, I’m going to win.’”
Piastri, despite his youth, is considered one of the most talented drivers on the grid. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that he will be a future world champion.
But it takes more than just talent to win a championship. The Australian needs the right car and the right circumstances for him to be able to achieve his dream.
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