Oscar Piastri: Has Formula 1 found its new Kimi Raikkonen?
Oscar Piastri has been mightily impressive in his rookie season at McLaren, not unlike the Iceman in his first season with the team.
If the rookie season of Oscar Piastri has shown anything, it’s that not a lot tends to faze the young Aussie.
Be it the overall pressures of Formula 1, the media spotlight, his first crashes, McLaren’s slow start to the year or partnering one of the sport’s hottest talents in Lando Norris, lesser drivers would have probably cracked under that kind of scrutiny.
Yet through it all, he tackles it with a dry sense of humour, some glib radio messages in big moments and a turn of speed that is making an ever-increasing number of people sit up and take notice – almost like it’s exactly what he’s meant to be doing, and stuff what anyone else thinks. Remind you of anyone?
Does Formula 1 have its new Kimi Raikkonen in Oscar Piastri?
Quickly dubbed the ‘Iceman’ by Ron Dennis for his calm demeanour in seemingly all circumstances alongside his enormous natural talent after making the move to McLaren following his start at Sauber, Kimi Raikkonen later won a huge fandom beyond his driving skill for his infamous brusque handling of interviews, people he wasn’t keen on interacting with or anything beyond his contractual obligations.
It took years, and perhaps the broadcasting of the FIA’s team radio channel, for people to see the true Kimi – with his perceived lack of on-camera persona more than made up for with the famous utterance of: “Just leave me alone, I know what to do!”
That was the code that needed cracking. The fact that it was hard to get much out of Raikkonenwas the whole point. Rather than him simply being rude for the sake of it, it was just his personality.
Now, Oscar Piastri isn’t the same personality-wise, decidedly more open than the Finn, but a shrug of the shoulders and a “bwoah” doesn’t feel like it would be beyond his vocabulary.
Piastri also offers more than a syllable at a time while being interviewed, but he doesn’t give too much away, quite quiet yet purposeful in what he wants to say, not often the sort to create too many headlines with what he comes out with. None of this is a bad thing at all, of course, in a world where drivers’ every word is hung on – and he is never afraid to have a laugh at his own expense either, leaning into the easily-made pun “Oscar Pastry” on occasion in the past.
On the track, though, the biggest apparent similarity between them shows in how level-headed they are.
A half-second “WOO!” is as excited as we’ve heard the Aussie after he crossed the line first in the Sprint in Qatar, before adding when pulling into parc fermé, in that unflappable manner of his: “I like the number 1 board, it’s got a good ring to it.”
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Like Raikkonen, Piastri made his F1 debut as a 21-year-old having flown through the junior categories, with Raikkonen having stormed to the Formula Renault title before earning his Sauber seat in 2001.
Both showed impressive maturity too, Raikkonen for his performances and handling of a car, Piastri for that and responding following his landing into Formula 1 with something of a wallop, after the contract saga that played out between Alpine and McLaren last year as he replaced Daniel Ricciardo.
No matter what anyone says, coming in to replace such a popular driver at a team in such circumstances cannot be easy, but even so, he did not let it get to him – and it takes a certain kind of temperament to be able to deal with any lingering negativity.
Not only that, he even managed to have time for a fun dig on social media when signing his contract extension with McLaren earlier this year, posting: “Stress-free contract announcement like always ”.
And that willingness to have fun on social media, at a moment that would have caused others enormous stress for years to come, should be praised (if you’re not affiliated with Alpine, at least).
Having manager Mark Webber, one of Raikkonen’s long-time rivals in F1 throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, in his corner will have helped. And even so, it was put to him that Piastri was an old head on young shoulders, and the former Red Bull driver agreed.
“Yeah, wish I’d had some of that when I was racing,” he said on Channel 4. “Oh, to be that relaxed and gifted. I just look on with envy.”
If you were to conduct a character summary of the Iceman in his early years, ‘relaxed’ and ‘gifted’ would feature pretty highly on the list of adjectives you would use for him, too.
Now, Piastri appears to have taken on that mantle with aplomb.
Is it too much to call him ‘Iceboy’? Possibly, but given the way he has grown throughout the season, his veins definitely don’t seem to run hot.
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