Formula 2 champion Oscar Piastri expects his role as Alpine reserve in 2022 to be “beneficial” for a potential F1 seat next season.
There was frustration from fans that the Australian was unable to make an immediate move onto the F1 grid for this year, particularly as F2 rival Guanyu Zhou will race at Alfa Romeo.
However, by spending a year in the background at Alpine, Piastri hopes that will put him in a better position to capitalise on an opportunity in 2023.
“I definitely don’t think it will be a wasted year,” he told Motorsport.com.
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“It goes without saying that I would have loved to have been on the grid, of course. But there’s a lot of things I can pick up next year, like the travelling schedule of an F1 season, having to adapt to that without the pressure of having to actually drive is quite beneficial, I guess.
“Listening to Fernando [Alonso] and Esteban [Ocon] also with a new car for next year, I can listen to how the car’s developing and with all my work in the sim I can try and contribute to that.
“There’s a lot of other things outside of driving that makes a successful F1 driver,” he noted, “and I think that’s the kind of stuff that I can take forward that I don’t need to be physically driving for.
“That’s definitely going to be an important part of the next year.”
Previously, some teams have put their young drivers into other categories such as Super Formula or DTM to keep them race sharp.
This never gets old ?@alpinef1team #A521 pic.twitter.com/ssU6ap2onU
— Oscar Piastri (@OscarPiastri) December 15, 2021
But Piastri, who is expected to make multiple FP1 outings during the year, isn’t interested in such a move.
“I’ll be pretty busy despite not doing that much driving,” he told Australian website Auto Action.
“We are putting together a big testing programme, it’ll be quite a lot of days considering its F1 testing, and it’s not particularly cheap.
“I’ll be doing some driving in some capacity. Probably not any race driving, but the way I’m looking at it, I want to prepare for F1 and for me, there’s not really much relevance in racing anything other than F1.
“I think it’s much more valuable to be doing test days in an F1 car than to be racing something else and trying to learn a new trade.”
However, while Oscar aims to be primed for 2023, with Ocon signed up next year and Alonso showing no signs of slowing down, will he have to look beyond Alpine for that illustrious F1 seat?
“It’s very early to start thinking about that kind of situation,” he admitted. “I think we’ll get a much better read on that once the season’s begun.
“I’ve made it clear, I want to be on the grid next year, and I feel like I deserve to be. I’m working towards doing everything I can to do that.”
