Oscar Piastri has offered his view on whether F1 drivers need to have a ‘f**k you’ attitude to win championships.

Piastri was asked for his view on whether drivers can win world titles without having a certain level of aggression in their personalities, following on from comments made by Lando Norris’ assertion he won’t compromise much on his own character in order to win a title.

Oscar Piastri: World Champions need certain characteristics

Earlier this month, Norris responded to the idea that World Champions need to be of a certain personality type, namely having a certain level of self-confidence or aggression as people.

This confidence can be seen in four-time F1 World Champion Max Verstappen, whose unyielding and unwavering self-belief has stood him well throughout his career, and whose unwillingness to accept mediocrity from his team can be seen as ruthless, while other World Champions like Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna were well known for sharing similarly uncompromising personalities.

Norris is well-known for his willingness to admit to his own weaknesses and self-doubts and said he isn’t willing to compromise much on his ideals even for the reward of becoming world championship.

“I feel like there is a very prescribed version of how people say a world champion needs to be – overly aggressive,” he told the UK’s Guardian.

“I want to win a championship. I’d rather just be a good person and try to do well. I’ll do whatever I can to win a championship but maybe I won’t sacrifice in my life as much as some others, in terms of who I am as a person and have the ‘f**k you’ mentality people say you’ve got to have. I still believe I can be a world champion but doing it by being a nice guy.

“I want to just enjoy my life. That’s kind of the attitude that’s maybe not as much of a killer instinct. I just don’t think you have to have that to be a world champion.

“I want to prove you can be a world champion and not have it. But I don’t want to be pushed around and I also never want to be seen as giving things up because I’m too nice. I’ll still fight for things and I’ll still take risks and I’ll still do whatever I know I can do to be a world champion but without losing the liberty of who I am.

“I don’t have to show everyone I’ve got that kind of attitude.

“I feel like people go around trying to put on a front and show people that you’ve got that attitude. I can easily go and pretend I’ve got a killer instinct and act like a bit of a dick that might give people that perception.

“But there are certain things I would not do that other champions have done. I don’t have as much of a killer instinct as probably most of the drivers or most champions because I was just not brought up that way.”

Norris is contending for this year’s title as McLaren has developed a particularly versatile and fast car this year, and is playing catch-up against teammate Oscar Piastri whilst also looking over his shoulder at the pursuing Verstappen.

Piastri himself has shown icy cool level-headedness since arriving in F1 two years ago and, having taken the championship lead for the first time in his career with victory in Saudi Arabia, has offered some insight into his own thinking on the topic.

“I think everyone has their own personality, everyone has their own style,” he said.

“I think the most detrimental thing you can do is try and do it in a way that’s not your own style. For some people, that looks very different.”

But while personalities may be different, Piastri said there are certain characteristics that he believes World Champion drivers need to show.

“There are certain characteristics that I think you do need,” he said.

“Obviously being fast is the most important one. But there are certain traits that you need.

“But I think, as Lando said, that doesn’t mean you need to be a bad person. You need to be tough on track. But there’s a lot of different ways you can go about it.

“I don’t think there’s one style or one perfect mould of what a Formula 1 World Champion looks like. I think they’ve all looked slightly different.

“You could argue that some of them look similar in a lot of ways, but again, I think the most important thing is to try and do it the way you want to do it, and that will give you the most.”

Oscar Piastri: Fighting Lando Norris the ‘dream scenario’

With Piastri leading his teammate and Verstappen, the Australian was asked whether he would prefer a battle for the title solely against his teammate or whether it’s easier going up against a driver from another team.

“Obviously as a team, we want to have the fight between just Lando and myself,” he said, explaining that, as long as he is the World Champion, either situation would be fine with him.

“That’s kind of the, I would say, dream scenario. Maybe for Andrea [Stella, team boss] and Zak [Brown, CEO], it’s slightly stressful, but ultimately that’s what you want.

“You want your two cars first and second and not have to worry about the others. That’s the dream, right?

“And I think for myself that would be a good position to be in as well. I think, you know, for me, if there’s other teams involved, it’s not a bad thing.

“And I think for the sport, we obviously want to see it competitive across multiple teams, and I think we’ve been getting closer and closer to that, especially last year and probably through this year too.

“So, if I’m World Champion in either scenario, that’s fine with me. But I think just needing to worry about your teammate is probably a slightly easier scenario than having to worry about, you know, three or four other teams.”

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