Oscar Piastri has matched Mark Webber’s F1 win tally. Guess who’s laughing loudest? Not the 23-year-old in the car.
After a seven-win surge in 2025 that thrust him into the thick of the title fight alongside McLaren teammate Lando Norris and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, Piastri finished the year on nine career victories — level with the man who now picks up the phone and steers his off-track moves.
“It’ll be good, hopefully. I mean, obviously, I’ve got to try and make it happen, but it’s been a good little inside joke through the year,” Piastri told the Beyond the Grid podcast when asked about the shared milestone with his manager. “He’s safe on the poles for now and podiums! But, yeah, wins are obviously neck and neck at the moment.”
That next win will push Piastri into rare air for Australian drivers: third all-time in F1 race victories, behind Sir Jack Brabham (14) and Alan Jones (12). He’s already moved past Daniel Ricciardo’s eight. The timing added a little sting too: after his last win of 2025 at Zandvoort in late August, the chance to hop past Webber had to wait.
Inside McLaren, the story isn’t just about raw speed. It’s about an Australian pipeline that’s quietly become a force. Piastri grew up watching Webber in Red Bull colours, taking on Sebastian Vettel and the sport’s heavyweights. Now Webber’s voice is one of the most trusted in his ear. Through Jam Sports Management, Mark and Ann Webber have shepherded Piastri since his 2019 Formula Renault Eurocup title run, and the tone of their relationship is obvious: supportive, dead honest, and completely unfazed by the noise that comes with being a championship contender at McLaren.
“Yeah, it is surreal,” Piastri admitted on the Off the Grid podcast. “I grew up watching Mark racing on TV, so to now have him as part of my management is kind of strange in some ways. This feels very normal now, but when we first explored that route, it was like, ‘I’m meeting someone I’ve watched my whole childhood in F1, and he’s now taking care of my career’… It took a little bit for that to sink in.”
Webber’s CV needs no embellishment. Nine wins, all in the last five seasons of his F1 career, peak years alongside Vettel at Red Bull. The near-miss of 2010 still hangs in the air whenever title talk surfaces, and Piastri is clear that those scars — and the lessons from them — are paying off now.
“He’s obviously been in a similar kind of fight in his career,” Piastri said. “For him, it unfortunately didn’t go the way he wanted, but the lessons from that, and the things that he thought went well, the things he wishes he did differently… those are things that can be passed on to me before I have to experience it myself, which is invaluable at times.”
There’s a steadiness to Piastri that feels very Webber. No fluff, little drama, and a tone that says the homework’s been done. In a season where McLaren asked its young pairing to go toe-to-toe with a still-ferocious Verstappen, Piastri’s growth was unmistakable: sharper on Saturdays, more ruthless on Sundays, more complete over a campaign that demanded both discipline and aggression. He won’t say it himself, but Webber’s fingerprints are all over that trajectory.
And the respect cuts both ways. The age gap is a neat time capsule: Piastri wasn’t even one when Webber finished fifth on debut for Minardi at the 2002 Australian Grand Prix, a result that sent Melbourne into giddy chaos and still lives rent-free in the sport’s folklore. Piastri’s current chapter is chasing something bigger — the sort of hardware that changes résumés and legacies — and the mentor who’s seen the sharp end of that fight is keeping the edges smooth.
Every situation is different, as Piastri is quick to caveat. One man’s lessons don’t perfectly map onto another man’s season. But the framework does. The expectation management. The strategic patience when the car’s not singing. The clarity when it is. Those are the margins that count when you’re facing a Verstappen-led Red Bull and the teammate across the McLaren garage who’s just as hungry.
Webber, for his part, can enjoy the joke — for now. Piastri’s next victory will nudge his manager down the ledger and put him third on Australia’s all-time F1 wins list. Don’t be surprised if Webber’s the first guy at parc fermé with a grin and a one-liner. And don’t be surprised if Piastri shrugs, nods, and gets back to work. That’s the partnership: one with lived experience, the other with the pace to rewrite the numbers.
