Oscar Piastri’s management set-up has shifted shape at the start of the 2026 season, but not in the way the paddock loves to assume.
The McLaren driver insists Mark Webber remains a central figure in his career, even after Piastri brought Pedro Matos — his race engineer from that title-winning 2021 Formula 2 campaign — into his inner circle ahead of this year’s championship.
It was the sort of tweak that inevitably triggered whispers about a changing of the guard. In reality, Piastri paints it as something far less dramatic: the same structure, just redistributed workload.
“[Webber] is still very much involved, and I’ve still spoken to him a lot through the start of the year,” Piastri told Fox Sports Australia ahead of the April break. But in the same breath, he made it clear he’s no longer the wide-eyed rookie relying on others to steer every conversation.
“I’m getting more experience in my own career, and there’s also an element of I’ve just got more experience, so I can make some of these decisions, ask some of these questions myself,” he said.
That last line is the tell. In Formula 1, the “manager” label often gets flattened into contract talk and sponsorship logistics, but for a driver early in their career it’s frequently about something more valuable: having an experienced voice in the room when the sport comes at you from every angle at once — political, technical, commercial, personal. Webber’s been that voice for Piastri since well before he arrived on the F1 grid with McLaren.
Piastri admitted as much when he reflected on his first season in grand prix racing and the sheer volume of things you don’t even realise you should be asking.
“Especially the first couple of years or especially year one of F1, there were a lot of questions that hadn’t even crossed my mind that Mark was asking as if they were obvious to me and the team,” he said. “I think now some of those questions come a lot more naturally for me.
“It’s just a natural evolution, really.”
That’s a driver describing the quiet, important step from being shepherded through the sport to actively shaping your own environment. It’s not about freezing Webber out; it’s about Piastri’s centre of gravity moving closer to the middle of his own career.
Matos’ presence, too, reads less like a political message and more like a practical one. Piastri knows him, trusts him, and has already won with him. In a season where every marginal gain matters — and where the calendar can grind down even the most robust support networks — adding another proven operator is the kind of decision that looks obvious from inside a top-level garage.
The arrangement, as understood, is that Webber will attend a selection of races while Matos is expected to be present for most, if not all, rounds. That’s not unusual in modern F1, where management and performance support can be spread across people with different strengths: one handling the long game and the big calls, another offering consistency and day-to-day clarity around preparation and communication.
What’s notable is how matter-of-fact Piastri is about it. There’s no sense of a driver trying to “go it alone” for the sake of optics. If anything, it sounds like he’s learning what the best drivers learn sooner or later: autonomy isn’t about cutting ties, it’s about having enough understanding to challenge, to probe, to steer — and knowing when to lean on experience anyway.
Webber’s continued involvement will always attract attention because of who he is — a former F1 driver, still visible as a television pundit, and someone with his own history of navigating top teams. But Piastri’s comments suggest the dynamic is settling into something healthier and, frankly, more sustainable: fewer training wheels, more shared responsibility.
In an era where careers can be derailed as quickly by off-track missteps as by mistakes in the cockpit, that “natural evolution” may end up being one of the more consequential developments of Piastri’s 2026 season — not because it’s explosive, but because it’s quietly grown-up.
