{"id":494559,"date":"2026-02-21T11:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T11:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/494559\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T11:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T11:28:10","slug":"oscar-piastri-explains-mark-webber-role-mclaren-tensions-comments-reaction-ralf-schumacher-comments-pre-season-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/494559\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri explains Mark Webber role, McLaren tensions, comments, reaction, Ralf Schumacher comments, pre-season testing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar Piastri<\/a> has sort-of clarified the reduced trackside role<\/a> of manager Mark Webber<\/a>, amid reports McLaren<\/a> wanted him ousted altogether.<\/p>\n

A combination of Piastri’s loss of form in the back-end of last season and several head-scratching strategy decisions from the team reportedly caused tensions between Webber and McLaren bosses, including chief executive Zak Brown and team principal Andrea Stella.<\/p>\n

Last week, it was confirmed Webber would step back from his full-time trackside role. Commercial commitments were cited as the reason.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Goalie incident sparks nine-man Olympic brawl<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Star’s reveals quintessentially Aussie pre-race act<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Penrith blow as skipper Cleary faces weeks out<\/a><\/p>\n

Webber and his wife Ann Neal have managed Piastri for much of his career, with Webber focusing on his development as a driver while Neal handles the commercial side.<\/p>\n

\"Oscar<\/p>\n

Piastri and Webber in the paddock during the Brazilian Grand Prix weekend.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Speaking in Bahrain following the conclusion of pre-season testing, Piastri said there wasn’t one incident that triggered the call.<\/p>\n

“There wasn’t anything specific, we just made a decision for things to look a bit different,” the Melbournian said.<\/p>\n

“Mark is still very much involved and I’ve been in contact with him a lot over the last few weeks.<\/p>\n

“He just won’t be trackside as much anymore. So that’s really the extent of it. But yeah, there was nothing specific that triggered it.”<\/p>\n

Webber’s trackside role will be filled by Pedro Matos, who was Piastri’s race engineer in his championship-winning F2 season.<\/p>\n

According to former grand prix winner Ralf Schumacher, McLaren wanted Piastri to get rid of Webber altogether.<\/p>\n

“There was quite a lot of pressure there \u2026 after last year, from what I’ve heard, it was very important to McLaren that Piastri had a different manager this year to bring more calm,” he said in German on the Backstage Boxengasse podcast.<\/p>\n

“There’s a lot going on right now \u2026 I still remember the final phase of last season, Mark Webber was constantly on the phone.<\/p>\n

\"Oscar<\/p>\n

Piastri in action during the final day of pre-season testing in Bahrain.\u00a0LAT Images<\/p>\n

“The relationship between Zak Brown and Mark Webber had cooled, so to speak.”<\/p>\n

Schumacher’s suggestion is not that tensions had cooled between the pair, but that the the relationship had become frosty as opposed to warm and friendly.<\/p>\n

Piasti ended the final day of pre-season testing with the 11th-fastest time of the day. He set his time during the day, before handing over the car to teammate Lando Norris for the evening session.<\/p>\n

He finished with the third-fastest time of the two tests combined, one-hundredth quicker than Norris, but a whopping eight tenths of a second behind the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.<\/p>\n

The F1 season gets under way in Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix on March 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri has sort-of clarified the reduced trackside role of manager Mark Webber, amid reports McLaren wanted him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-494559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494559","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=494559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}