McLaren boss Andrea Stella has drawn parallels between Oscar Piastri and seven-time F1 world champion Michael Schumacher.
Piastri this week inked a new two-year contract with McLaren that will keep him at the team until at least 2026.
The Australian has had an impressive debut season, building on a stellar junior career that saw him win three championships in as many seasons.
But while it was that early success that made him appealing to the team, his attitude and character are what earned him a new deal less than a year into his F1 career.
“Obviously when McLaren so strongly wanted to sign Oscar, we looked at the result of the junior categories,” Stella explained.
“But what happened in the early days of the collaboration with Oscar is that we could see that what he achieved in the junior categories had good reasons for that to happen.
“We could see this in the natural speed, which is related to the talent to some extent.
“We even saw it the first day of the simulator. He was kind of assessing his own performance, saying ‘this is where I am, this is where I need to improve’. It was matching so well with what we could see from the data. That was quite impressive.
“It’s just a gift, to some extent, this self-awareness in relation to speed, in relation to how to go and grab this speed opportunity.”
It’s a trait that has carried on throughout the earl phase of his top flight career and helped Piastri get up to speed in F1 quickly.
But there is more to the Melburnian than the ability to drive a car fast and process it internally.
For Stella, a key weapon in the 22-year-old’s armoury is his people skills, his ability to encourage and drive those around him in a conscientious way.
Those softer skills, he suggests, are what will separate him from other similarly ‘talented’ racing drivers.
“For us, it was important to make sure that the person that we keep on board is a person that not only fits our culture, but will contribute to establishing the culture even more, and potentially adding to the culture, adding to the values, and the behaviours that make us become a team of mates,” Stella explained.
“In this sense, Oscar, I have to say, from just a personal point of view, if he wasn’t a Formula 1 driver, I would appreciate him as a person.
“The values he brings into the sport and the values he brings into the collaboration with the team, in the sense makes me think about Michael [Schumacher].
“Somebody who worked with Michael here in the paddock, with another team now, said to me, he [Schumacher] was so capable of building families.
“He was definitely tough on track, but within the team, the spirit, the sense of unity, it was no shortage of a family, a sense of family.”
It’s an extreme endorsement from Stella.
The Schuamcher-Ferrari relationship is one of the most successful in F1 history, netting five consecutive world championships from 2000 until 2004.
That success was born out of hard work and commitment to the cause; the German joined the Prancing Horse in 1996 when it was at its lowest ebb.
With Jean Todt, Ross Brawn, Rory Byrne, and others (including Stella), the team was galvanised into a powerhouse.
It’s exactly what Stella and Zak Brown are looking to recreate at McLaren, and in Piastri the suggestion is they’ve found the man they believe can be their version of Michael Schumacher.
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