Five days before the Turn 4 kerb at Albert Park cruelly contributed to a reconnaissance lap crash that put him out of the F1 season opener, he was learning how to jump kerbs in a Supercar.
The Tuesday at Calder Park was at its heart a public relations stunt for Monster Energy, which is a mutual sponsor of Tickford Racing and McLaren.
But it was also a chance for 24-year-old Piastri to finally sample a category the young Melburnian had grown up watching before making the big move to Europe.
Tickford prepared two Mustangs for the Calder outing, handing Piastri its current #6 race car and providing Cam Waters his own 2025 machine.
Team manager Matt Roberts has seen plenty of drivers jump into the team’s Fords across more than 20 years with the squad, but the chance to work with a current F1 star was something special.
“He’s a genuine racer, that kid. I was super impressed,” Roberts told Speedcafe of Piastri.
“Oscar, Cam and myself had a 20 minute chat before he got in the car. He’s very methodical. He was just simply amazing to work with.
“You can see why he’s in Formula 1. He’ll be a champion one day, there’s no doubt about that. Just his approach, his mindset…
“We quizzed him about whether he wanted a sighting lap before we got into the day’s filming and whatnot, but he was straight into it with the Sky Sports presenter [as passenger].”
Sky Sports’ Rachel Brookes was invited along to the Calder session to film a piece for the weekend’s Australian Grand Prix broadcast.
The resulting five-minute production, included below, is a neat contrast between the worlds of Supercars and F1.
Piastri begins by admitting he’s never had to do his own racing harness up, telling Brookes with a wry smile that he’s got “no idea how the car works or where the track goes”, either.
It was also the young Aussie’s first time in a race car with a roof, a gear stick and a clutch pedal.
“He loved it,” beamed Roberts.
“He went overtime. He was supposed to be with us for like an hour and a half and he ended up being there nearly three hours.
“We ended up sending him out on track on his own [without a passenger]. Cam was on track and they were just having a bit of fun out there.
“We couldn’t get him out of the car. He was pretty excited to have a steer of it.”
The Sky Sports clip included a segment on Piastri learning to ride those big Calder kerbs, showcasing one of the key elements of Supercars racing.
It was a fun focus of the Calder session that is tinged with more than a touch of irony after the devastating events of Sunday afternoon.
“It was nice to able to look at kerbs and go, ‘I can hit that’ and not, ‘if I hit that I’m going to break either my back or something on the car’,” Piastri told media after the Calder laps.
Piastri looked at home both in the Supercar and in the company of Waters, another laid back Aussie who transforms into an immense competitor when the visor goes down.
Although wary that he was driving Waters’ race car just two days out from the opening track action at Albert Park, Piastri was not hanging around.
“If I shut my eyes and listened to the car going around the track, I couldn’t have told you whether it was Oscar or Cam in the car, he was straight on the money,” said Roberts.
“On the shiftcut, braking, it was it was very, very impressive. I’d have him back tomorrow!”
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