Daniel Ricciardo's replacement Oscar Piastri 'is going to be a sensational racing driver', claims McLaren boss Zak Brown

McLaren boss Zak Brown is confident that Daniel Ricciardo's replacement Oscar Piastri is going to turn out to be a great racing driver. Oscar Piastri has a stellar junior category record where he breezed through the categories by winning three championships in three years. In his last two racing years, he won the title in Formula 3 and Formula 2 before becoming a reserve driver for Alpine.

This was something that McLaren looked at when signing the youngster and poaching him from Alpine. Piastri has replaced fellow Australian Daniel Ricciardo at McLaren and people will be keeping an eye on him to see how he fares on the big stage.

According to the McLaren boss, Piastri will be able to assert himself in the sport. In of the social media segments on the team's channel, Brown said:

“We think Oscar is going to be a sensational racing driver. If you look at his career to date, he’s won a lot of championships in his first year – which always tells you a driver is special. He’s got a great mental approach to the sport. And now that we feel that Lando has a lot of experience, we feel like we have a great blend of experience and youth."

He continued:

"Our experience just also happens to have youth so I think we sit here very excited with the potential of our driver line-up of Lando and Oscar for the foreseeable future.”

I know what great talent looks like: McLaren boss

Talking about why the team went for Oscar Piastri, Zak Brown claims that he knows what great talent looks like and the Australian was certainly one of those. He said:

“It does, not only in choosing racing drivers, but how to work with racing drivers and also in the racing environment. I’ve been around a lot of racing teams, I know what great (talent) looks like, I know what not great looks like. I’ve been around a lot of Formula 1 teams, a lot of IndyCar teams, a lot of NASCAR teams, a lot of sports car teams… I’ve been around drag racing teams."

He added:

"So greatness all looks the same, regardless of what racing series you’re in, and not being so great all looks the same, regardless of what racing series you’re in. Having been around racing my entire life, and driven, I think that gives me a lot of good perspectives on how to assess what’s going on.”

Oscar Piastri's partnership with Lando Norris at McLaren is going to be very interesting.

About the author

Charanjot is an F1 writer and Content Specialist at Sportskeeda with over 5 years of experience covering news, trends, and analyses related to the sport.

He started watching F1 when Narain Karthikeyan made his F1 debut in 2005 and was hooked when Kimi Raikkonen delivered a stunning lap in Monaco in the same season. He has been with the firm for almost 4 years and tries his best to put his links in the F1 paddock to the best use so as to report relevant and accurate information.

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If given a chance, he would like for India’s Buddh International Circuit to be added back to the calendar. A Mechanical engineer and an MBA, Charanjot aims to spearhead the cause of making F1 a mainstream sport in India. Apart from F1, he also follows MotoGP, cricket and MMA.

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Edited by Diptanil