Video: Piastri’s first home race for McLaren

After two failed races at the start of the season, Oscar Piastri naturally wanted to excel in Australia, as Albert Park circuit is literally “home” to him – he was born and raised on the outskirts of Melbourne.

The new issue of the McLaren video diary dedicated to the Australian Grand Prix begins with a photo shoot where we see Oscar on the ocean coast with the national flag in his hands. Australian racer McLaren, commenting on this episode, emphasized that his home is very close to these places.

He then drove an interesting olive-colored McLaren sports car to the go-kart track, where he once started with motor racing. This circuit is also nearby, and there he spoke briefly about the tasks for the upcoming Grand Prix, and then drove a few laps around the ring that he has known since childhood. Now there is a large poster with his picture.

By the way, the film crew working with him, apparently as a joke, cheerfully announced him a 10-second penalty, which Oscar clearly did not like.

All this was at the beginning of the week and other events were already scheduled for the race weekend: on Wednesday a walk around the track with a partner and team engineers, on Thursday communication with fans and, of course, with the press. Piastri had all this in abundance in his home country – it’s no coincidence that Zach Brown, the executive director of McLaren Racing, admitted after the race that his team’s debutant’s load on the home stage was twice as high as normal.

But, probably, it’s still nice when a whole crowd of fans congratulates you on your upcoming birthday – April 6, Oscar will turn 22 years old, sing a classic song and chants. Of course, Piastri was featured alongside his partner, Lando Norris, in all of these episodes.

Then the authors of the video diary covered the training and qualifications very briefly to dedicate almost half of the video to Sunday’s events.

Everyone remembers that the race developed according to a somewhat unusual scenario, and it was clear from the faces of the McLaren mechanics that they were also surprised by this development of events: all these red flags and restarts only caused concern with the team and the drivers. knocked them out of rhythm and increased the risks. But of course they were genuinely happy when their riders made successful maneuvers.

And when the race was finally over, everyone congratulated each other on a good result, because both earned points in Albert Park – Lando took 6th place, Oscar – 8th.

Piastri made it clear that he was delighted to finish in the top ten for the first time in his home country and thanked the fans for their enthusiastic support: “I loved every second, even if it was real madness, which is completely from applies to the race. It’s great that we both earned points, and this will give the team new strength!