For nearly 20 glorious laps, Oscar Piastri could almost taste the champagne.
Brilliantly blue skies. More than 130,000 people packed into the circuit. And only the gleaming red Ferraris of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc standing between Piastri and lead of the Australian Grand Prix.
McLaren chief executive Zak Brown with Oscar Piastri in pit lane after the team decided to prioritise Lando Norris in the Australian Grand Prix.Credit: Getty Images
For as long as this precocious driving talent has been alive, Australian drivers have tried and narrowly failed to finish their home grand prix atop the Albert Park podium.
In 2002, the year after Piastri was born, Mark Webber was invited onto the podium by race winner Michael Schumacher but only as a special guest, after he steered his Minardi through a demolition derby to somehow scrape into the points, Stephen Bradbury style.
In 2014, Daniel Ricciardo, his then Red Bull team and everyone else at the Albert Park circuit thought he had broken the hoodoo, when he crossed the line in second place and took part in the podium celebrations.
After a sharp-eyed race steward noticed that Ricciardo’s car had breached an arcane rule governing fuel loads, the bubbles turned to vinegar. Piastri was aged 13 back then and remembers watching the drama unfold on television at his Brighton home, a short spin around the bay from the Albert Park circuit.
This time, it was Piastri who felt the sting of coming oh so close. For nearly a third of the race, he doggedly trailed the twin Ferraris, each lap giving rise to the possibility of fabled finish for the home-town boy. Then, without warning, team radio crackled with an instruction from his McLaren bosses to move over for teammate Lando Norris.
Piastri, a driver who in just his second F1 season has developed a reputation for keeping his composure in the stickiest of situations, duly gave way without complaint, accepting that Norris’ car was better placed – and paced – to make a race of it with the Ferraris.
From there, he held his position and finished fourth; the same best result achieved on this track by Webber and Ricciardo over their careers.
Had it ever occurred to Piastri that the Albert Park podium might be cursed?
“Hopefully, I can break it,” he said. “So close for so many of us. We will see what we can do next year.”
Melbourne race fans show their support for hometown hero Oscar Piastri.Credit: Getty Images
Piastri’s disappointment did little to detract from a bumper race weekend, when the Melbourne weather was near perfect and a record 452,055 people came through the turnstiles over the four-day event.
The next time the grand prix returns to Melbourne Park it will be for the first race of the 2025 season. Perhaps more importantly for Piastri, the existing podium is scheduled for demolition in time for the 2026 race, when a new pit lane building is constructed.
This Australian Grand Prix race made a mug out of pre-race predictions, particularly those that forecast a Red Bull cakewalk. The race was not four laps old when the all-conquering Max Verstappen limped into the pits with his right rear wheel belching smoke and wreathed in flames.
Verstappen later explained the brake had locked down on the wheel in the first turn of the race and refused to release. “I was basically driving with the handbrake on,” the three-time world champion said.
Mechanics work to extinguish the fire that broke out in Red Bull driver Max Verstappen’s car on the fourth lap of the race.Credit: AP
In the absence of Verstappen, Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez couldn’t produce the pace required. This left the two Ferraris as the fastest cars on the circuit, with Carlos Sainz winning just two weeks after having his appendix removed and teammate Charles Leclerc finishing second.
Piastri had no gripe about the team instructions to let Norris through. From his driver’s seat, he could see that Norris at that stage of the race was faster than him and a better chance to catch Leclerc.
“At that point I was keeping with Leclerc and Lando was catching both of us,” he said. “I was honestly hoping he would pass me and go and get Charles.
“Of course, at home, I would have loved to be able to stay in third, but for me, that [decision] was completely fair.”
Norris thanked his teammate and sympathised with the wrench any driver would feel after being asked to give up a podium position in front of their home crowd. But in F1, the fastest driver is always right. Norris said that had Piastri not moved over, he would have simply overtaken him.
“I don’t think the result changed at all,” Norris said. “He made my life easier and helped us as a team. For any driver racing before their home fans, you want to be on the podium.”
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With championship points from all three races so far this season, Piastri said he would leave Melbourne “pretty happy” with his weekend’s work.
If there is such a thing as F1 karma, he should be taking in the view from the Albert Park podium before too long.
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