{"id":75673,"date":"2025-08-18T15:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T15:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/75673\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T15:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T15:05:10","slug":"piastri-has-the-potential-to-be-truly-great-says-marko","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/75673\/","title":{"rendered":"Piastri has the potential to be truly great, says Marko"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>One of the sport’s most successful talent scouts, Helmut Marko believes that Oscar Piastri has the potential to be one of F1’s greats.<\/p>\n

The driving force behind the foundation of the Red Bull Junior Team in 2001, Marko’s protege’s having included Sebastian Vettel<\/a>, Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz, Alex Albon, Pierre Gasly and many more.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the success of the Red Bull young driver scheme prompted its rivals to follow suit, with Alpine – in the form of the Renault<\/a> Sport Academy – ‘discovering’ Piastri in 2020 months after he secured the Formula Renault<\/a> Eurocup.<\/p>\n

Later that year he conducted his first test for the F1 team, with further tests in 2021 and 2022. It was in mid-2022, of course, that it all went wrong for the French team, which initially appeared to have agreed a deal to loan the Australian to Williams for 2023 but then announced that he would in fact be replacing Sebastian Vettel<\/a> at Aston Martin.<\/p>\n

The Australian insisted otherwise, and following the intervention of the Contract Recognition Board he was declared a free agent and subsequently signed to McLaren.<\/p>\n

Marko, talking to F1 Insider, admits that Piastri’s is a rare talent.<\/p>\n

“Piastri has the nerve, is more consistent, and always gets the best out of himself. I’ve never seen him so emotionally charged,” says the Austrian. “Norris may be faster over a lap, but overall I see Piastri ahead.<\/p>\n

“He has had an incredible career and is improving year after year,” he adds. “He had some major fluctuations last year, depending on the track, but that’s no longer the case.<\/p>\n

“He still has a long way to go,” he admits, “but the potential to become a truly great driver is there, though.”<\/p>\n

As for McLaren’s decision to allow its drivers to race one another, Marko, who has never countenanced such a strategy, believes it could work against the Woking team.<\/p>\n

“As long as you are so dominant, you can stay ahead without team orders,” he says. “I think it’s very sporting that they haven’t used them yet.<\/p>\n

“But when things get tighter, it’s certainly a disadvantage if two top drivers take points away from each other. But that’s not the case at the moment, with the lead they have, they’re not risking anything.”<\/p>\n

Of course, for the rest of us, it poses what should be the true highlight of the second half of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the sport’s most successful talent scouts, Helmut Marko believes that Oscar Piastri has the potential to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-75673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}