Oscar Piastri gives honest take on whether he can become F1 world champion

Following a remarkable 2025 season where he narrowly missed out on the world championship, Oscar Piastri is looking to build on that momentum in the years ahead.

While the McLaren team celebrated Lando Norris’ title win, there’s little doubt it was a mixed day for Piastri, who came so close in just his third season in Formula 1.

The Aussie fell short of a title bid late last year. He put up a strong fight but ultimately couldn’t catch his teammate Lando Norris. Despite this, he continued to perform at an elite level for most of the year.

There was also some tension between Mark Webber and McLaren over how they handled the internal title race. Webber felt Piastri wasn’t given enough backing during key moments of the season.

Piastri has stayed focused throughout and believes there’s still plenty of time to reach those goals down the line.

Oscar Piastri backs himself for a world title, but knows the pieces still need to fall into place

Speaking on the High Performance Racing podcast, Piastri opened up about his belief in becoming a champion one day, but was quick to point out how much of that dream rests on having the right car.

Piastri explained that while he’s always believed in his abilities, he understands that Formula 1 success isn’t just about talent. It also relies heavily on timing and team performance.

“I think so, yes. I may be a little bit different in that I don’t spend that much time thinking about the hypotheticals,” he said. “I want to become a Formula 1 world champion, but I try and look at it from a very realistic point of view.”

“That’s a combination. I need to do my job. But in this sport, for good or bad if you don’t have the car to achieve it, you can kind of believe you’re going to be an F1 world champion all you want.”

“But if you don’t have the best or one of the best cars then you can believe that it’s going to happen all you want but it’s probably not going to happen.”

Piastri finished second in last season’s championship behind Norris and will be hoping for another shot at a title this year.

Oscar Piastri explains the moment he realised he could compete for an F1 title

During the interview, Piastri recalled that it was after the 2025 Australian Grand Prix when he truly felt ready to compete for a world title.

“I left that weekend (Melbourne 2025) knowing that I had taken a big step forward from the year before. I knew I still had some steps and improvements to make,” Piastri said.

“But I knew that I was really close to just being able to kind of maximise my potential… After Melbourne in 2025, I knew within myself, and especially after China, when I won, I knew that as long as I got close to my potential, that I could win races.

Piastri credited much of his early confidence in 2025 to having a strong car and seeing Lando Norris as his main competition.

“A big part of that comes from the car you’re in. Especially in the first half of the season, I knew that if I got close to my potential, then realistically, I probably only had to beat Lando. That was it. It’s not an easy task, but it’s a little bit easier when you’ve only got to worry about one or two people.

“Obviously Max was back in the picture later in the year. But 2025 was the first time in F1 where I went ‘If I can get close to my potential here – like, if this is where my ceiling is and this is what’s needed – then yeah.’”

Piastri has already shown he has plenty of talent behind the wheel. But winning a title takes more than just skill; he’ll need everything around him at McLaren aligned for things fall into place at just the right time.

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