McLaren’s new contract for Oscar Piastri has thwarted Christian Horner in his long-term chase of the Aussie Formula 1 star.
The defending constructors’ champions confirmed this week that Piastri has put pen to paper on a long-term contract extension, on the eve of the new F1 season and the Melbourne native’s home race, the Australian Grand Prix.
Mirror Sport understands that the new deal runs for three years longer than his previous contract, which was due to expire at the end of 2026, and that the financial terms put him on par with team-mate Lando Norris who earns around £20million per year. McLaren have decided not to confirm those details, stating only that his extension is a “multi-year” deal.
Piastri is entering only his third season as an F1 driver and this is the second time he has earned a new contract in a little over a year. That shows just how highly the 23-year-old is rated by his team, who they signed from Alpine after a bitter legal fight over his contract which McLaren won.
And both those extensions were offered for the same reason: McLaren wanted to move quickly to ward off interest in their Aussie star. Red Bull have been most keen, with team principal Horner a big fan – something about which he hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to keep quiet.
As far back as in 2022, before Piastri had even raced in F1, Horner told a podcast that he was ruing the decision not to sign him as a youngster. “There was an opportunity for Red Bull to look at him at the time and we didn’t take up that option, which is something that I regret,” he said.
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Red Bull were sniffing around Piastri during his stellar debut season, prompting McLaren to give him a new deal to stop their rivals from putting him next to Max Verstappen. And this latest contract for the Aussie seems to have been sanctioned by bosses for a similar reason.
Horner has struggled to find a suitable partner for Verstappen for many years now. In 2024, Sergio Perez lost his seat at the end of the year while Daniel Ricciardo was also shown the door after a failed audition for the main team, meaning Liam Lawson heads into the new campaign as a Red Bull Racing driver despite having only 11 F1 starts to his name.
With Piastri previously available next year, Horner was targeting the two-time race winner and McLaren acted fast to deny him the chance, having caught wind of Red Bull’s plot. Again, Horner was hardly hiding his admiration, telling the Netflix cameras in the new season of Formula 1: Drive to Survive that he would take Piastri over Norris without hesitation.
McLaren now have a settled driver line-up for some time to come, though. Norris’ current deal runs until the end of the 2027 season and the Brit is unlikely to have his head turned by any rival teams, especially if he follows through on his pre-season billing of being favourite for the drivers’ title this year.
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