{"id":577641,"date":"2026-04-01T03:03:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T03:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/577641\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T03:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T03:03:10","slug":"oscar-piastri-kerb-hops-ford-mustang-in-australian-v8-supercar-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/577641\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri kerb-hops Ford Mustang in Australian V8 Supercar test"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/oscar-piastri\/828689\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Oscar\u00a0Piastri<\/a> recently traded in his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/team\/mclaren\/10\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">McLaren<\/a> Formula 1 car for the world of Australian V8 Supercars. Returning to his Aussie roots, the 24-year-old joined fellow countryman and\u00a0Supercars driver and 18-time race winner Cam Waters.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To be honest, I probably watched the V8s more than I watched F1 because the time difference was a lot kinder. Used to watch the drag races here with my dad,&#8221; Piastri revealed.<\/p>\n<p>The trackday presented a unique learning curve for the F1 driver, who admitted he initially had &#8220;no idea how the car works or where the track goes.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After his first few laps in Waters&#8217; machinery, Piastri was encouraged to &#8220;take a bit more kerb&#8221; after &#8220;being very polite&#8221;. He quickly took on the challenge and kerb-hopped the Ford Mustang resulting in smiles from those watching.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It\u2019s good fun. Nice to drive something new. First time driving a race car with a roof on it,&#8221; Piastri said.<\/p>\n<p>Piastri turned his shaky start to the 2026 F1 season around with a second-place finish at the Japanese Grand Prix. The race at the Suzuka circuit was Piastri&#8217;s first grand prix start of the year after he crashed on the reconnaissance lap in Australia and faced an electrical issue ahead of his Chinese campaign.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the race, yeah, there wasn\u2019t anything more we could have done,&#8221; he said after the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/oscar-piastri-mclaren.jpg\" alt=\"Oscar Piastri, McLaren\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" loading=\"lazy\"\/> <\/p>\n<p class=\"title\">Oscar Piastri, McLaren<\/p>\n<p class=\"photographer\">Photo by: Simon Galloway \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We got a good start, the pace was good, I felt like I was strategic or smart with how I used the boost and how I managed that side of racing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our strategy was good, we didn\u2019t blink too early. Obviously, the safety car was a shame, but I think as race weekends go we couldn\u2019t have done any better than that. So yeah, for me I\u2019m very happy with the performance that I put in, very happy with the performance from the whole team.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Clearly, we\u2019ve still got some, firstly, performance to find, but also Lando\u2019s side of the garage was a pretty interrupted weekend with all the issues, and clearly the start of the season has not been easy for us with reliability, so we\u2019ve got a long way to go.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But yeah, I think we showed that if we get everything as good as we can get it, then we can cause a few headaches.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>            We want your opinion!<\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-auto\">What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?<\/p>\n<p>            <a href=\"#\" class=\"ms-link text-link font-bold\">Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-1 text-body\">&#8211; The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar\u00a0Piastri recently traded in his McLaren Formula 1 car for the world of Australian V8 Supercars. Returning to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,277594,813,107978,913,806,805,803,804,2333,283380,85,1511],"class_list":{"0":"post-577641","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1-japanese-grand-prix","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-japanese-gp","13":"tag-mclaren","14":"tag-motor","15":"tag-motor-sports","16":"tag-motosport","17":"tag-motosports","18":"tag-oscar-piastri","19":"tag-oscar-piastri-kerb-hops-ford-mustang-in-australian-v8-supercar-test","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-trendingteam"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577641","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=577641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}