An Australian F1 great has hailed Oscar Piastri’s victory at the Dutch Grand Prix as a “big day for Australian motorsport” as the 24-year-old expanded his lead atop the driver’s standings.

Piastri’s McLaren teammate Lando Norris’ unfortunate engine failure grabbed a lot of the attention in the aftermath of the race in Zandvoort, but it did not take away from the brilliance of the Australian.

As Piastri picked up another race victory, he is quietly rewriting the Australian record books.

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The Melburnian has now matched his manager, Mark Webber, with nine career race wins and surpassed Daniel Ricciardo’s total of eight.

This was his seventh race victory of the year, the most ever by an Australian driver in one F1 season.

Piastri is now only behind Australia’s absolute icons of the sport for career wins as three-time world champion Jack Brabham tasted victory 14 times, while world champion Alan Jones notched 12 victories in his career.

Webber was trackside in the Netherlands, and was grabbed by Sky Sports for an interview, where he shared his delight in Piastri gaining bragging rights over him.

“Magnificent. He drove so well today,” Webber said.

LUSAIL CITY, QATAR – NOVEMBER 30: Oscar Piastri of Australia and McLarenSource: Getty Images

“I don’t do many interviews about him, but I think today, big day for Australian motorsport.

“We’ve had Daniel [Ricciardo] win plenty, obviously Jack [Brabham] and AJ [Alan Jones].

“Oscar now, having this success so early in his career, is a real credit to him. He’s put a huge amount of work in, executed beautifully, and the team have done such a good job as well.

“I’m happy. We’ve had a lot of banter between the two of us. We have had a lot of banter. But’s he’s on me now, and I’m very, very, very happy.

“I think he’s going to, hopefully, keep going.”

The result was a significant turnaround from last year as Piastri finished fourth, almost 30 seconds behind winner Norris.

The Australian has made a habit this year of changing his fortunes at tracks where he has struggled in the past, namely also in Spain and China, where he won this year.

He has also became more ruthless in his efficiency, upping his win percentage when starting from pole position to 80 per cent, the best of all time.

“It feels good obviously, I controlled the race when I needed to and obviously it was incredibly unfortunate for Lando at the end,” Piastri said.

“I felt like I was in control in that one and felt like I used the pace when I needed to, it was a bit of a different race to 12 months ago.

“I’m very happy with all the work I’ve done to try and improve around here and very satisfied to come out on top.

“We didn’t change anything special, just trying to improve everywhere we can.

“The start of this weekend was looking like a difficult one and I managed to get it together in qualifying and I was happy with the pace I had today.

“There were a couple of safety cars that spiced it up a little bit. I’m very proud of the whole team and it wasn’t just myself to improve to get here it was the whole team around me and without them, none of this is possible.”

He added: “I think qualifying was the key this weekend. Through the free practice sessions, it was looking like a difficult Zandvoort again, but we chipped away, tried to find time, tweak the car here and there.

“But, I just tried to really improve how I was driving because, let’s be honest, it’s pretty hard to complain about the car we’ve got. So just tried to chip away with that and it came good when it mattered.

“Through the race today, I felt like I had good pace as well and used that when I needed to. So massively proud of firstly myself, but also the whole team around me in turning it around from 12 months ago.”

Despite his now sizeable gap in the standings from Norris, Piastri was far from convinced that he has the title stitched up with nine races remaining.

If his words are anything to go by, there will be no complacency creeping in to Piastri’s psyche.

“There’s still a long way to go. I need to keep pushing and trying to win races still,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a very comfortable margin. As we saw today, it can change with one DNF very, very quickly.

“So this far out from the end of the year, it’s not a comfortable gap.”