Oscar Piastri has picked up plenty of labels in Formula 1 already — prodigy, future champion, the guy who never seems flustered — but this week he acquired one that won’t wash off with a podium champagne shower.
A newly identified prehistoric flat wasp species has been named *Gwesped piastrii* in his honour, after researchers found the fossil preserved in amber in Myanmar. The study’s authors weren’t coy about the reasoning, either: University of Oxford’s Corentin Jouault, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology’s Di-Ying Huang, and Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo’s Celso O. Azevedo said the name is a nod to Piastri’s achievements in F1 — and because the amber’s colouring reminded Jouault of McLaren’s unmistakable orange.
For a sport that’s equal parts engineering arms race and travelling circus, it’s a particularly on-brand moment: F1 is forever trying to pin drivers down to stats, lap times, and contracts, and Piastri has instead become, quite literally, a line in the taxonomy books.
The fossil itself is tiny — just over a millimetre long — and dated to the middle Cretaceous period, which ended around 66 million years ago. In the paper, the researchers framed the find as part of a broader scientific picture, pointing to what they described as a “seemingly inexhaustible” biodiversity preserved in amber from the region. Their descriptions of *Gwesped piastrii*, they added, help refine understanding of morphological diversity within the genus.
Naturally, the F1 internet did what it always does: it went straight for the puns.
Piastri played along. On Instagram he posted that he was “buzzing about this” — and McLaren, never one to leave an open goal unattended, leaned into it on social video. Piastri’s on-camera response was delivered with the kind of deadpan timing that’s become its own little brand in the paddock.
“I have heard of the buzz in the news,” he said. “I’m famous. I’m a part of biological history.
“I’m so excited, I might sting someone.”
It’s the sort of story that lands because it cuts against the grind of a modern F1 season. In 2026, with the paddock permanently vibrating from the usual churn of rumours and pressure, it’s oddly refreshing to see something land that’s purely light — a driver being namechecked not in a performance review, but in a scientific paper because a piece of amber happened to look like a McLaren.
And if you want a sense of how Piastri is navigating the year beyond the cockpit, his schedule hasn’t exactly screamed “quiet week off”. He’s also been spotted at the Isle of Man TT recently, with manager Mark Webber introducing him to one of motorsport’s most storied — and frankly unforgiving — arenas. Footage followed Piastri as he threaded his way through a garden to find a decent vantage point, before watching riders flash past at ludicrous speed on public roads.
His verdict was immediate and unvarnished: “These guys are nuts.”
That line, more than the wasp name, probably tells you something about Piastri’s baseline for risk. F1 drivers inhabit a bubble where “normal” is redefined, but even they have their limits — and the TT has a habit of recalibrating anyone’s sense of what counts as brave.
Still, it’s *Gwesped piastrii* that will stick. Long after the season’s talking points have moved on, and long after the next wave of speculation has done the rounds, there’s now a fossilised insect in amber carrying the name of a McLaren driver — because three scientists saw a shade of orange and decided that was reason enough to make him, in his own words, “part of biological history.”
