McLaren driver Oscar Piastri has brushed off concerns that close friendships between Formula 1 drivers could impact their competitive edge on track.
McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown stated in his book that he prefers drivers not to be friends, explaining that off-track camaraderie can make them reluctant to race each other aggressively.
Several of the current F1 drivers went to the island of Langkawi for a boys’ trip between the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and the Bahrain Grand Prix, which is being held in Malaysia.
Piastri joined the holiday along with his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris, Mercedes’ George Russell, Haas’s Oliver Bearman, Audi’s Gabriel Bortoleto and Williams drivers Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz. Russell initially shared updates from the trip on Instagram, with the post reaching over 950,000 likes by the time of writing.
“Cheers for picking up the bill,” Piastri commented on the post. The Mercedes driver later clarified that most of the bills were put on his tab.
Other comments from fans included: “George, thank you for feeding us all this Landoscar content, never stop,” and “God I love this thank you. Netflix, I hope you cover it for DtS [Drive to Survive].”
Speaking to the media ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend at the Sepang International Circuit, Piastri was asked if Brown had contacted him about the trip.
“No, he hasn’t,” the Australian said. “It was pretty last-minute.”
For Piastri, the trip was a rare opportunity to switch off from the F1 championship.
“It was good fun just being able to switch off from racing a bit. It’s very rare that you get so many drivers together, just spending time together away from a racetrack,” he continued.
“And at the end of the day, we’re 22 guys that love racing. Obviously, it’s a bit tricky to talk about certain things because we are racing each other. We’ve got a lot in common that we just never really get to talk about. So it was quite nice.
“We all did our own separate things at points and whatever; it wasn’t like we were attached to each other for the whole time, but maybe on the go-kart track we were. No, it was good fun, honestly, and I enjoyed it.”
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