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A list-snap, production. Welcome to the motorsport brief, a catch-up with the F1 World Championship
leader, Oscar Piaestry, here in beautiful Singapore. Hi everyone, Rusty with you for a special
ep of the garage, short cast, very excited to be on the ground for a big week at Formula
1's official night race. The sport arrives a fortnight after Azerbaijan, which in some ways
went off-script, certainly for what we've seen in much of 2025. It was a tough one for
Oscar. His teammate and title rival, Lando Norris, didn't make a huge gain either after
Oscar's early exit there, so the points gap between them is now basically the equivalent
of a Grand Prix win. Max Verstappen's resurgence in Baku has plenty of people talking. Can
he catch Lando, who was 44 points ahead of Max on the ladder, as we said on the pod
last week, perhaps he will be the ultimate disruptor in these final races. Red Bull upgraded
their current monster in Italy, and since then, Max has won two straight. But the Marina
Bay Circuit is something of a bogey track for him. There's been podiums here for sure,
but no wins for Verstappen in eight appearances. He needs a lot to go his way to have a decent
hope of winning a fifth straight world title, but it's not beyond the realms of mathematical
possibility. In terms of recent history, Lando won the Singapore Grand Prix last year. Oscar
was on the podium, too. The McLaren team is very close to wrapping up the 2025 constructors
title, and that is almost certainly going to happen this weekend. The team has maintained
a very unified approach to get to this point, and if they can seal the constructors, seven
races before the season ends, you'd argue it's all been worth it. There hasn't been the
Mercedes 2016 Hamilton vs. Rossburg on track. Some in the paddock here, though, are starting
to question whether they now need to get behind one driver if Max's form continues in order
for McLaren to also win the coveted drivers title. It has the makings of a pretty cool
weekend when you think about all of that. Then throw in the heat, the humidity, the races
here often go the full two hours, and it is slightly later than usual on the calendar.
Will we get some wet weather? It is going to be huge. If you're looking for a good debrief
on Baku to set you up for the weekend, check out the chat with Matt Hickey from Code Sports,
the most recent episode in our library, and we'll be on the ground for Bathurst next week
too on heading there after the Singapore GP. There is a Ripper Convo with Mark Winterbottom
who had that come back to the podium, the return to the podium with Tickford at the 500
at the bend. Nice to speak with him again. Let's get to our guest. First time that we've
had him on this season, I'm grateful to McLaren for giving us a slot, because as you'd
expect, there was a lot of interest from mainstream media in Australia right now. At this point
of the season, with everything going on, you could understand if they limited that perhaps
scaled it back just to enable Oscar to focus on the job at hand. I also tried to think of a few
talking points that didn't just relive stuff that's been debated ad nauseam by other outlets throughout
the season. Enjoy the conversation with Oscar P. Astry. Welcome. How are you? I'm very good.
Thanks, how are you? It's awesome to see you again. Thank you very much for doing this for us.
The year so far on balance Oscar, lots of highs. Has it exceeded your expectations when you
sit out? How do you feel about it at all at this point and so on? I think yes, it has exceeded
expectations. I mean, this is kind of what I hoped it wouldn't look like, but yeah, you know,
if you said I was in this position before the season started, I would have definitely taken it.
It's been a great season. Obviously, a lot of highs, some lows as well, but I think yeah,
like I said, on balance, it's been a really good season. The teams stepped up as well. The car
we've had this year has been phenomenal and it's been nice to put it to good use more off
than the nuts, so it's been been a great year. Can we go to Baku? That last round was tough
naturally, but I think I said it to a colleague today with 24 rounds. You're bound to get
something that's, you know, maybe not on the side of the ledger that you want. How have you
framed that? How have you kind of moved forward from that? Yeah, I mean, just trying to analyze
it as best as I could, and you know, unfortunately, just a few mistakes all on the same weekend that kind
of made it look like a pretty dramatic weekend, but ultimately, I think, you know, just trying to
take the lessons from it and move on. Yeah, you know, some pretty simple mistakes, unfortunately,
so Singapore's a new place, a very different track, you know, still a street circuit, but very
different speeds to Baku, so yeah, I'm looking forward to getting back out there. You and I are
talking with a thunderstorm happening outside. Do you think we might get that, and what is that
like if we do? I mean, you never know, in Singapore, I think, yeah, we've had rain, I think the
two years I've come here now, and this is the third, I think we've had rain nearly every day at
some point. It's just never coincided with the session for me, so I think Thursday of the weekend
is supposed to be pretty wet and thundery, but I think the rest of the weekend is still a chance,
so we'll have to wait and see what again, you never know, in an hour it could be dry again here,
so we'll wait and see what we get. Can I come back to the way you answer the Baku question,
because I sense Oscar, that that's a real asset of yours, the way that you deal with things
like this, the ability to kind of move on to not dwell on things. Is that something you've always
had or is that something you've had to learn in this business? How did you get to that point?
I would say both, I think it is, I wouldn't say it was something I just had naturally from the start,
I mean, maybe an element of it, but I feel like I kind of picked it up pretty quickly.
There's obviously a lot of work that goes into maintaining that, and as we all know, in motorsport,
a lot of stuff goes wrong, and there's a lot of things that go wrong that you can't do anything
about either. I can't change what happened in Baku. I've done the analysis and look through
things I can change and try and improve, but once you've got to that point, then there's
kind of no point trying to dwell on it, and I think, for me, just trying to remove the emotion from
that is, I think that's the part that's probably the more natural part, is removing the emotion from it,
but definitely trying to move on from it is something I've learned along the way through experiences,
and hard work of myself and the people around me too. Great asset, I wish I had that at my age. My
youngest daughter is doing a little bit of social see with us, my oldest one. Got some great
advice from a supermodel one, so Kiwi, supermodel, Georgia Fowler, she'll hate me telling this story,
but she told her to be gritty. That was kind of the best piece of advice, and really resonated with her.
Have you had something like that? This is a brutal business. What formula one is like? What bits of advice
have you had for this game? I think that is generally good advice, but I think it kind of goes back to
what I said before. There's a lot of things that will go wrong. It's not a matter of if they go
wrong, it's when, and it's kind of how you deal with that. It's the same thing in life, I guess.
There's a lot of things that are not going to go exactly how you want, and you have the choice of
how you rack to them. Again, if you can control it, then you can do something about it and change it,
and if you can't control it, then it's not always easy, but trying to move on from it and do something
you can control. That's what I try to focus on. I guess that's the same thing. Like you said,
it's a brutal sport. You don't often have much time to feel sorry for yourself, and there's
everyone can feel sorry for themselves, but that's not how you improve yourself and try and
become a better driver in races. Much older than you, obviously, came through in a year when
Mark Weber was racing. He's been through some tough moments in his game. How helpful has he been
generally, and even this year? He seems to stay largely out of the line line in his role now,
doesn't he? I think he's very hard working behind the scenes on how, if you're trying to make my
life as as simple as possible, whether that's from not currently, but whether it's been contracts in
the past, or more just the ins and outs of being an F1 driver and a lot of the things that people
don't see, simple things like just knowing how I'm going to feel at the back end of a season with
all the traveling, organizing that as efficiently as we can, just trying to make everything as easy
as we can. He doesn't want to be in the spotlight. He probably feels he's spent enough there and
wants to move away from it a bit, which is fine, but no, he's been incredibly helpful.
Great podcast chat with my colleague Tom Clarkson and your engineer Tom Stowler in recent months.
He's been a silver medalist in rowing, in Beijing, things like that. Do you draw from that sporting
mindset? You love other sports by nature? Is that side of what he brings to the table, not just
his engineering skill, something that you work with? I think probably more so behind the scenes,
and I think it's a real asset of Tom's that he's kind of experienced, it's slightly different,
obviously different sports, but he very much has understood from an athlete's point of view what
the pressure is like performing at Olympics. I would say he is a hell of a lot harder than you've
got one chance in four years at an Olympics. We've got 24 changes a year. So I think in some ways,
understanding that pressure, the hard work, obviously the engineers are putting in hard work,
but I think very much understands at a closer level the hard work of an athlete,
the schedule, the physical training, the diet, whatever it might be, and I think also just
being in the fight and being again the one that can kind of influence it as the driver,
the rower as the athlete, he's been in those shoes which is rare. So I think that's a real
asset and I think in the high pressure scenarios, that's where it kind of naturally helps, I would
say, but I think it just really helps with understanding, not just for me, but for the whole team,
obviously we've got a lot of things to balance through the weekend, driving, being the most important
part and where the results are, but we've got a lot of sponsors, we've got a lot of fans,
all kinds of things that we kind of balance through the weekend and the year, and I think for him
kind of knowing how that kind of affects things as well, gives him power in the team to make
our life as simple as possible as well. So good to get him back on the podcast and the good
news is, we are not done yet, more with Oscar PS3 right after this.
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You're listening to the motorsport brief recorded in the heart of Singapore before the GP
action got underway at Marina Bay back to the chat with Oscar now.
I love your passion for other sports and that's clearly a bit of an escape for you from all this.
Aussie sports fans have probably struggled a little bit to kind of appreciate the spirit of fairness,
right, that Andreia and McLaren have worked so hard on. And we've seen in Formula One over time
when you have two very competitive athletes at the peak of their powers or having a great run
in good machinery, it's very difficult to balance all that. Give us your take on how that's worked
and how well it's worked perhaps, let them know a bit about that. Yeah, I mean, I think it is
you know, it is a difficult sport in that aspect. You know, you've got a team of over a thousand
people, which includes the two drivers, all fighting for the Constructors Championship.
But then you've also got two of those people being the drivers wanting their own championship
inside of that. And balancing that is always going to be hard. You know, there's no
correct way of going about that. There's a lot of different ways you can go about it, but I don't
think there's a correct one. And you know, again, unless you know all the details, it's incredibly hard
to, I guess to judge or even to understand. And you know, a lot of those things stay private for
good reasons. So I mean, I get it, I get it to the outside world that sometimes, you know,
not every decision is going to make sense to the people watching, but I think within the team where
we're very at peace with, even if it's not always the right decision, that the intentions are
there. And you know, if either of us have a problem or anyone in the team has a problem,
we can speak about it and talk it through. And that's a real strength of ours. I think so.
Yeah, you know, it's not always going to make sense to people watching. And you know,
there's going to be biases one way or another for fans, I guess, but yeah, we're very kind of
at peace as a team on how we manage those things. And that includes myself and Lando. So yeah,
I think it's a really good team environment. But collectively, if you're at peace with that stuff,
that's great. That says so much. You've come through in an era when Formula One is box office,
but you strike me as incredibly down to earth. Has that extra attention impacted you as a person
as it being difficult to just to stay Oscar? I don't think it's really been difficult to stay me,
you know, it's definitely been an adjustment and a learning process in terms of firstly,
people knowing who I am and people supporting me and cheering me. And I think at the track,
it's kind of become normal in some ways or not necessarily normal, but you get used to it
because people are there to watch the race and cheer you on. It's more of the interactions
away from the races that still catch me off guard every now and again, you know, walking the street
or being in the supermarket, whatever it might be. That's when it kind of goes, you kind of go,
yeah, okay, this is a bit different how it used to be. So I think for me, that's kind of been
the main difference or difficulty in adjusting. It's not so much been, you know, leading a completely
different life. It's how do I live the same life still. And yeah, you know, there's obviously a
lot of good that comes with that as well. So there's certainly no complaints. It's just a different
way of going about life now. We haven't got time for it. I'd love to know if you're a good shopper,
we can do that another time. Seven to go. Don't change a thing in your approach. I mean, it has it,
you know, has that steely determined Oscar Piaestry that sits across from you now. Maybe got even
a little bit more to bring to the table over the final run here. I don't know if I have necessarily
more to bring or if I want to bring more. I think, you know, what I've been doing through the year
seems to have been working well. And you know, there's been constant refining to that and adjustments.
And you know, there's been some weekends where I feel like I've performed better than others. You
know, it's not been, there's been weekends that have been fantastic. There's been weekends that
have been not so good. So I think just constantly adjusting that and checking in with how I feel like
I'm performing and where I'm at, that's always an important thing. So yeah, feel like I'm kind of
on top of that and, you know, adjusting it how I need to on the weekends. But, you know, ultimately
I'm going there to try and do my best. If we've got the car to win the race, try and win the race.
That's the most important thing and just get the most out of myself. You know, I've kind of always
said through through my career, but especially once I got to F1, you know, I don't like to judge my
my kind of where I'm at based on my results. It's always based on how I feel like I've driven
that weekend. And you know, there's been races this year that I've won where I've felt that
a race where I've come second or third has actually been better. So that for me is an important
thing in continuing to judge it like that's always how I'm going to judge it. And if that means
I win races, that means I win races. There is a huge wave of support for you at home. I know you'd
know that trade on that. Have an amazing run to the line. And thank you very much for talking to us
tonight. No problem. Thank you. 45 years since Alan Jones won the title. Prior to that,
Sir Jack Brabham in 66, other Aussies have tried, come close, had some success. We hope this is
Oscar's year. I feel like we're seeing more of his personality coming through too. Did you feel that
in the conversation? He's not a Hollywood type, but the fact that he's kept true to that says so
much about him. Now that he's chalked up as many wins as fellow Aussie, Daniel Riccardo in his
career, Oscar has every right, I guess, to feel like that long term race in this sport is cemented.
And he can just focus on the big prize. We wish him well for the rest of the championship,
as I said. We have a big week next week at the mountain for the great race. I'll be working on
our sister platform, Triple M, as they cover the Baptist 1000. And we'll file some pods for the
garage while we are there. In the meantime, enjoy the Singapore Grand Prix, everyone. Bye for now.
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