Where Oscar Piastri would ‘probably’ be racing in 2025 if he’d signed for Alpine instead of McLaren

Follow us on Google Discover

Oscar Piastri was initially poised to race for Alpine, rather than McLaren. But when the Enstone team tried to announce him, it sparked a remarkable legal battle.

Piastri insisted he hadn’t agreed to the move, even though he’d come through the team’s driver academy. He was one of the top young talents in motorsport after winning Formula 3 and Formula 2 in back-to-back years.

He had to wait a year after his F2 triumph, but Alpine hoped to promote him following Fernando Alonso’s move to Aston Martin. By that point, he was already bound for McLaren.

Zak Brown’s squad prevailed in the contractual dispute, and Piastri replaced his underperforming compatriot Daniel Ricciardo ahead of the 2023 season. Alpine instead signed Pierre Gasly from the Red Bull junior team to link up with Esteban Ocon.

In 2022, Alpine finished above McLaren in the standings, scoring 173 points to the British team’s 159. But their fortunes have sharply diverged since.

The result is that Piastri has won two Grands Prix and scored nine podiums before the end of his second season. In the same period, Gasly and Ocon have only managed two podiums between them, with a giant 503-point gap opening up between the two teams.

Peter Windsor thinks Oscar Piastri would have signed for Mercedes if he’d taken Alpine route

Piastri will feel completely vindicated after the first 40 races of his F1 career. McLaren are on course to win the constructors’ championship for the first time this century, while Alpine could finish second from bottom.

If he’s to win a title at Woking, though, he’ll have to beat Lando Norris. The Englishman is 42 points better off this year, though Piastri has been virtually on a par with him in the past few months.

Norris is seen as one of F1’s five elite drivers, alongside Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, Alonso and Charles Leclerc. One driver who may fall slightly outside that bracket is George Russell.

And Peter Windsor, speaking on a recent live stream, suggested that Piastri could have partnered Russell for 2025 had he started out at Alpine. Windsor believes he would have comfortably beaten Ocon and earned a promotion to Mercedes when Hamilton left for Ferrari.

“I think it’s a shame,” he said. “If Oscar had stayed at Alpine, he would have blown away Ocon, and then he probably would have got the Mercedes drive when Lewis left.

“Not that that’s better than the McLaren. All I’m saying is he’d probably be in a Mercedes now alongside George Russell, which would be interesting.”

Oscar Piastri helped Otmar Szafnauer realise Alpine were ‘untrustworthy’

If Piastri does eventually decide to leave McLaren in pursuit of a number-one driver role, it’s hard to see anybody turning him down. Of the drivers yet to win a title, he may have the highest ceiling.

Indeed, Mario Andretti says Piastri is ‘definitely’ a future champion, reflecting the consensus within the F1 paddock. His talents may have been somewhat wasted at Alpine given their miserable performance this year amid off-track upheaval.

Former team principal Otmar Szafnauer realised Alpine weren’t ‘trustworthy’ in the midst of the Piastri fallout. A picture of Szafnauer was included in a team statement he’d had no part in producing.

Looking to the future, Red Bull are ‘very impressed’ with Piastri and have earmarked him as a long-term target. They already have a ‘close relationship’ with his manager Mark Webber.