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Full Noise by SN
The Live Sport Bible is here!Piastri address Red Bull trade and Webber relationship
SEN • May 11th, 2026 4:57 pm
Oscar Piastri has responded to speculation he is set to a move away from McLaren and lifted the lid on changes to his relationship with Mark Webber.
Since the middle of the 2025 season, rumours of in-house fighting and preferential treatment towards his McLaren teammate Lando Norris have been rife.
The climax to last season – which saw Norris claim the world title and Piastri slip from being the outright leader to eventually finishing third - had many believing the Australian would be looking for a drive elsewhere.
Moreover, amid reports Max Verstappen is considering retirement, paddock whispers have suggested that Piastri is Red Bull’s “Plan B” should the four-time world champion call time.
Whatever the gossip, the 25-year-old insists he is going nowhere.
“Even if I don’t become a world champion, or none of that happens, then I think being known as someone who went out racing as hard as they could, did everything they could to try and be the best, but also in the right way, that’s an important thing for me as well,” Piastri told the McLaren YouTube channel.
“Being a true racer, but someone that was very committed to the team and tried to make McLaren a better team.
“You need to look after yourself well. You need to be a good team player. You need to work, not just with the team of engineers around you, but with the hundreds of people at the factory as well.
“You need to be a lot of things. You can be all of those things, and if you’re not fast, it doesn’t really matter. It would be nice to think that I wasn’t just a driver in a time of success for the team.
"I’d like to think I was a driver that helped the success of the team.”
Central to the chatter linking the Aussie to Red Bull is former driver and Piastri’s long-time manager Webber, who once drove for the F1 outfit.
At the start of the 2026 season, it was confirmed that Webber would take a backseat to Piastri’s day-to-day affairs with his Formula 2 race engineer Pedro Matos travelling with him.
It sparked rumours in the paddock that the alleged fallout behind the scenes was directly linked to Webber, but Piastri has moved to explain the change.
"The relationship's good. Very thorough, is Mark. When I first got into F1, Mark was coming up with questions and ideas that literally hadn't even entered my brain,” Piastri said.
“I would hear him say it and go like, 'How the hell did he think of that?' Or like, 'How am I ever going to think of that?'
"And I think just with experience, we're always learning every day, but now starting my fourth year, I have either the answers to a lot of those kinds of questions that I wouldn't have had in the first couple of years, or I know the questions to keep asking, which just comes with experience.
"There's naturally less and less for Mark to do on the racing side of things the more experienced I become. But especially in the first couple of years, there are some lessons you have to learn the hard way, and there's no other way of doing it, but I'm sure there could have been plenty of other slightly annoying, tougher lessons to learn that I was probably spared because of Mark's experience and Mark's guidance.
"There's probably always going to be situations or things that have gone smoothly or almost problems that weren't problems that I'm never going to know about because Mark managed them for me. That's probably how it's changed in the last few years."
F1 returns on May 23 (AEST) with the Canadian Grand Prix.
