{"id":199175,"date":"2025-10-09T01:40:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T01:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/199175\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T01:40:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T01:40:10","slug":"the-incredible-impact-mark-webber-is-having-on-oscar-piastri-behind-the-scenes-at-mclaren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/199175\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018incredible\u2019 impact Mark Webber is having on Oscar Piastri behind the scenes at McLaren"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\/ Follow us on Google Discover <\/a> <\/p>\n

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri is in pole position to become the first Australian since 1980 to win the Formula 1 world championship.<\/p>\n

Jack Brabham won the drivers\u2019 championship<\/a> three times in 1959, 1960 and 1966, before Alan Jones<\/a> last achieved the feat in 1980.<\/p>\n

Since then, only three Australians have won a Formula 1 race: Mark Webber<\/a> (nine), Daniel Ricciardo (eight) and Oscar Piastri<\/a> (nine).<\/p>\n

Ricciardo has ruled out a Formula 1 comeback<\/a>, meaning that the hopes of Australia rest on Piastri\u2019s shoulders.<\/p>\n

But Piastri can rely on having Webber in his corner as he\u2019s been managing his career for several years.<\/p>\n

Position Drivers’ Championship PointsPts 1 336 2 314 3 273 4 237 5 173 6 127 7 88 8 70 9 39 10 37 <\/p>\n

The McLaren<\/a> driver has a 22-point lead in the championship with six race weekends remaining, but his advantage over Lando Norris<\/a> and Max Verstappen is slowly shrinking.<\/p>\n

Last weekend\u2019s Singapore Grand Prix<\/a> saw tensions increase within the McLaren camp despite Andrea Stella\u2019s<\/a> team securing the constructors\u2019 championship.<\/p>\n

Journalist Lawrence Barretto has now shared the role Webber is playing behind the scenes in Piastri\u2019s camp this year, and how that could benefit the 24-year-old as the title race becomes even more tense.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: McLaren driver Oscar Piastri\u2019s life outside F1 from height to girlfriend<\/a><\/p>\n

\"MarkPhoto by Jayce Illman\/Getty ImagesMark Webber\u2019s \u2018incredible\u2019 advice is playing a key role in Oscar Piastri\u2019s 2025 F1 season<\/p>\n

Barretto was speaking on the F1 Nation Podcast about how Piastri compartmentalised his issues at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix going into Singapore and said: \u201cI think he was able to do that in Baku brilliantly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we go back to earlier this weekend, which feels like ages ago, actually, he pulled it back.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was very quick on Friday. Lando was making a few mistakes. Suddenly, it looked like Oscar had put it all behind him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is probably just going to be another example of him being able to compartmentalise it and move on again, because, look, he\u2019s still leading the championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s just seen that Lando\u2019s just chipped out a couple of points out of him. And he\u2019s got Mark Webber in the corner, who I think has been an incredible factor in this in the way that he\u2019s been able to counsel him through the junior formulae, into Formula 1, to react in the right way.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd, yeah, I think we saw a bit of needle on the radio when he was kind of going to the team relentlessly, almost, at the start, like, are you going to do anything about it? Are you going to do anything about it? But that\u2019s normal, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: All you need to know about McLaren F1 Team from team principal to engine<\/a><\/p>\n

How close did Mark Webber get to winning a Formula 1 championship as Oscar Piastri closes in?<\/p>\n

Webber never won a drivers\u2019 championship, finishing third to Red Bull teammate Sebastian Vettel in 2010, 2011 and 2013.<\/p>\n

Vettel nearly doubled his points tally in 2013, and had a significant advantage in 2011, but the year the German won his first title in 2010 was far closer.<\/p>\n

The Australian missed out by 14 points, with Ferrari\u2019s Fernando Alonso splitting the two Red Bull drivers, and a collision at the South Korean Grand Prix between Webber and Nico Rosberg snatched away his best chance of winning the championship as Vettel suffered an engine failure that day.<\/p>\n

Webber would have learnt a lot from that moment and his years as Vettel\u2019s teammate to help Piastri come out on top in his fight with Norris and Verstappen.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

TalkingPoints<\/p>\n

Who will win the 2025 Formula 1 drivers\u2019 championship?<\/p>\n

Speaking to Crash<\/a> about missing out in 2010, Webber said: \u201cI was in with a chance of winning the championship until the last race, so I must have been doing something right, and in the end, there are a lot of positives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel I have driven very well for most of the season, and that\u2019s the most important thing to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis weekend [in Abu Dhabi] didn\u2019t turn out, and it\u2019s a shame, but it\u2019s a good time to reflect in the next few weeks and look back at the highs and the lows, but that\u2019s the way the sport is sometimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been quite a few emotions over the last couple of weeks; when you come so close to the top and just miss out, it\u2019s a shame, but I tried my absolute hardest, and I have great guys around me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Webber will hope that Piastri doesn\u2019t go through the same experience when the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix<\/a> comes around this year, with the Australian able to win the title before the final race as things stand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us on Google Discover McLaren driver Oscar Piastri is in pole position to become the first Australian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,859,913,2333,52584,85],"class_list":["post-199175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-mark-webber","tag-mclaren","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-singapore-grand-prix","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}