Oscar Piastri is now a two-time Grand Prix winner (Image: Getty)
has described the moment he signed his first F1 contract as “very special”, but his location at the time was memorable for different reasons. The Australian was in a service station car park in the UK when he committed his future to .
The 23-year-old arrived in F1 in bizarre circumstances. After spending a year on the sidelines waiting for an opportunity at Alpine, the Enstone-based team announced him as Fernando Alonso’s successor when the Spaniard’s surprise move to Aston Martin was confirmed.
Piastri, however, had other ideas. In a now infamous post on Twitter (now X), the Australian racer wrote: “I understand that, without my agreement, Alpine F1 have put out a press release late this afternoon that I am driving for them next year. This is wrong and I have not signed a contract with Alpine for 2023. I will not be driving for Alpine next year.”
Then, the bombshell news dropped. Piastri was called in to replace at with the eight-time Grand Prix winner released from his contract one year ahead of schedule following a miserable 2022 campaign.
“Signing my F1 contract was a very special thing,” Piastri told . “Even if there was some controversy around it, it was very, very special.
“It was in a service station car park in the UK, so it wasn’t the most glamorous place to be signing an F1 contract, but it was still a very, very special feeling.”
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Oscar Piastri was an Alpine academy driver (Image: Getty)
Piastri’s decision to ditch Alpine for proved to be an inspired one. Two seasons later, he has two Grand Prix victories and 10 podiums to his name, and heading into his third full-time F1 season in 2025, the Melbourne-born racer has an opportunity to fight for a Drivers’ Championship title.
For Alpine though, it has been far from plain sailing. Otmar Szafnauer, who was axed as team principal ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix in 2023, shone a light on the situation earlier this season. “Before I took the job, it was ‘everybody’s reporting to me’ – I get there and that’s not the case,” he explained.
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“And I knew at the beginning… I thought I could manage it, but I knew it’s problematic, and I remember I had absolutely nothing to do with not signing Oscar Piastri correctly. That mistake was made in November [2021] – I started in March [2022].
“In November, the Piastri contract was meant to be signed – it was never signed. I started [in] March, I had no idea. They didn’t submit the CRB documents correctly and never signed a contract with him.”