Oscar Piastri told he would be stuck ‘at the back of the grid’ if it wasn’t for McLaren

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Oscar Piastri will inevitably look back on the 2025 F1 season with disappointment. While he won seven Grands Prix, he let a sizeable lead slip in the world championship and eventually finished third.

But Piastri has achieved far more in his first three seasons than most of his F1 rivals. He scored podiums in year one, won races in year two and then nearly became the sport’s least experienced champion since Lewis Hamilton in 2008.

Piastri had been lined up for an F1 seat with Alpine before McLaren swooped in 2022. Zak Brown prevailed in a remarkable legal battle.

Will Piastri have a better career than any driver on this list?

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Alpine wanted to pair Piastri with Alonso for the 2023 season, but they ended up losing out on both drivers. It’s one of F1’s great ‘what ifs’.

Oscar Piastri would be scoring ‘very limited points’ at Alpine

Alpine finished sixth in the standings in 2023 and 2024, powered each time by a couple of podium finishes. But this year, they slipped to the bottom of the constructors’ standings.

The Enstone outfit only scored 22 points all year, while ninth-place Sauber managed 70. Pierre Gasly was responsible for all eight of their top-10 finishes.

In a different timeline, Sam Bird says it may have been Piastri ‘scoring very limited points’ at the back of the field. Instead, he was helping McLaren win the world championship as a sophomore driver.

“What a signing Oscar Piastri’s been for this team,” Bird said on the Chequered Flag podcast. “Three and a half years ago, he was still at Alpine, and we had that whole fallout.

“It goes to show, you put the right driver in the right car at the right time, you watch them develop and watch them flourish into a championship-challenging driver.

“Can you imagine Oscar Piastri now if he was stuck in the Alpine? We wouldn’t be speaking and saying amazing, incredible things about him. He’d be stuck at the back of the grid scoring very limited points.”

Alpine were accused of bullying Oscar Piastri

Perhaps Piastri would have performed well enough at Alpine to earn a move to a front-runner.

Indeed, one F1 expert suggested that Piastri would have replaced Hamilton at Mercedes if he had followed this path.

But if Alpine had got their way and partnered him with a two-time world champion in Alonso, it would have been difficult to stand out.

Former boss Otmar Szafnauer says Alpine missed a contractual deadline to lock in Piastri. The team hope to become a force under the new regulations with Mercedes power units, but they arguably lack the star driver required, for all Gasly’s efforts.

Brown says Alpine tried to ‘bully’ Piastri into signing by publicly announcing the move. It was a gamble that backfired spectacularly.