Piastri heads the title fight by 16 points from teammate Lando Norris after six races of the F1 2025 season.
The Australian has won on four occasions and has swung the championship battle by 39 points in the last five races.
Piastri has now emerged as a serious threat for this year’s title after Norris was tipped as the early favourite.
That has even led to criticisms of Norris’ approach in recent races as he reacted to the disappointment of losing out to his McLaren teammate.
Alan Jones, who won the world title for Williams in 1980, suggested it was a sign of weakness, with Prost offering a similar opinion.
“Motorsport is obviously played out on the track,” Prost told France’s l’Equipe.
“The reflexes and natural talent of the drivers are obviously essential.
“But motorsport is also played out in the mind. Psychology is a crucial element.
“It already was in my day, but social networks have made it even more crucial to a driver’s success.
“Nowadays, everything is shown, everything is experienced, everything is known.
“A lot of drivers are succumbing to this trend towards sharing.
“I think that in doing so, they put themselves under a lot of pressure.
“Others choose discretion and, in my opinion, with good reason.”
Throughout his career, Prost earned the nickname ‘The Professor’ for his calculated approach to racing.
His style did not have the same flamboyance as Ayrton Senna, to whom he was teammate at McLaren in 1988 and 1989, but netted him 51 wins from 199 starts.
Piastri is much the same, having developed a trademark of building into a race weekend without making many mistakes while remaining cool under pressure.
The likeness to Prost is one the Melburnian himself has acknowledged.
“I would say much, much closer to Prost in that side of things,” he told Speedcafe last March.
“I think with the amount of downforce we have on the cars these days, I think you have to drive them quite straight.
“And with the tyres we have as well, they just don’t like being sideways, so you have to always adapt to what you’ve got around you.
“An element of it was deliberate [in 2023], but not entirely,” Piastri added of his trademark approach.
“I was gaining experience with the car; I was getting more and more comfortable with the car in different conditions.
“Qualifying is when you have the highest grip, the lowest fuel, it’s the best conditions you have, and I think in some ways it can disguise some of the handling difficulties that you have.
“That was definitely an element, especially in the first part of the year, where I just felt much more comfortable in qualifying, somewhat ironically, because it’s so high pressure.
“But for me, that’s where I always felt the most comfortable with the car.
“As we got later into the year, that wasn’t as much of a trend, but I think the only thing that was also working against me in the second half of the year was so many new circuits.
“What I gained in understanding the car a bit better at different fuel loads, I then lost again because I was still learning the circuits.”
However, that unspectacular approach afforded him critical track and seat time, valuable commodities to a young driver and has gone a long way to accelerating his development.
That has paid dividends, with two wins in 2024 laying the foundation for what has been a strong start to his 2025 campaign.
It’s an approach that has caught the attention of Prost.
“The new championship leader, Oscar Piastri, doesn’t communicate much,” he observed.
“We don’t know much about his life off the track.
“Naturally reserved, the Australian disappears between races and frees himself from this pressure.
“If I had one piece of advice to give him, it would be to keep quiet.
“Norris, on the other hand, is constantly on the [social] networks. You see him in nightclubs,” Prost added.
“And what’s more, when he’s on the track, he admits his weaknesses.
“The more you show yourself, the more fragile you become.
“Lando is a driver whom I respect enormously, but if I had one piece of advice to give him, it would be to keep quiet and not to weaken himself like that.
“The consequences are enormous, and not just for his fellow drivers. There’s the image he’s spreading around the team.
“This is more important than you might think because it influences the impressions that the mechanics and engineers have, which are crucial.”
Prost retired from F1 at the end of 1993, the year in which he won his fourth world title.
He subsequently went on to acquire the Ligier team, which was rebranded in his name before it collapsed in 2001.
Since then, he’s taken on a number of ambassadorial and advisory roles within the sport, including with Renault, and remains a familiar face in the F1 paddock.
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