Oscar Piastri is an Australian racing driver, born in Melbourne on 6 April 2001.
He was a Formula 1 rookie for the 2023 season, and along with Lando Norris at McLaren, formed the youngest combined driver line-up on that year's grid - having in fact been born a month after Fernando Alonso's Formula 1 debut.
Piastri's arrival on the grid came with much fanfare, but also with plenty of controversy, with McLaren and Alpine battling it out for his signature as both teams believed they had valid contracts for him to race with them for the 2023 season.
Legal proceedings eventually escalated to the FIA's Contract Recognition Board, and the CRB found McLaren were in fact the team who had the rights to claim him as their driver for 2023.
In a similar vein to Lewis Hamilton, Piastri started in motorsport by racing remote controlled cars at a high level before starting his own karting career, doing so as a 10-year-old before rising through the ranks.
He went on to emulate Charles Leclerc and George Russell in winning the Formula 3 and Formula 2 championships in back-to-back seasons, on top of a Formula Renault Eurocup triumph the year before his F3 title to make it three championship-winning years in a row for the young Australian.
Without a seat available in 2022, Alpine made Piastri their reserve driver and put him through multiple in-season tests to prepare him for life behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car.
Piastri, along with manager and multiple F1 race winner Mark Webber, took his future into his own hands however. When it appeared Alonso would remain with Alpine for 2023, they negotiated with McLaren and earned him a race drive with the Woking-based team, to replace the struggling Daniel Ricciardo.
Oscar Piastri came into Formula 1 in 2023 for his debut season with the reputation of having won multiple titles at junior level, but also following a dramatic contract tussle between McLaren and Alpine.
As Alpine's junior driver and with Fernando Alonso having announced his departure to Aston Martin for 2023, Alpine believed they had the legal paperwork in place to promote Piastri to a race seat for 2023 - while they also offered Piastri's services to McLaren on a 'loan' basis if they needed a replacement for Norris or Ricciardo for one-off races during the season, with Covid-19 still prevalent in the paddock.
After Alpine announced Piastri as a race driver for 2023, he later posted on social media denying this would be the case - and it later came to light that he had signed a deal to race for McLaren from 2023 onwards on a multi-year deal weeks beforehand.
The case had to go to the FIA's Contract Recognition Board, with the CRB finding in McLaren's favour, clearing the Australian to take his place on the grid in 2023 for the first time.
It was certainly an unorthodox way for Piastri to announce his arrival on the Formula 1 scene, but above all else, the man himself would certainly rather do his talking on track.
And he did exactly that, piecing together a highly-impressive F1 rookie campaign.
It was a tough start to the season for McLaren overall, the team admitting they had failed to hit targets with the MCL60, but an upgrade programme which started from Austria sprung Piastri's season into life.
He would go on to score two podium finishes, a P3 in Japan and P2 in Qatar, following his sprint victory the day prior at the Lusail International Circuit.
Despite making an immediate impression, race pace served as a clear area of focus for the Australian racer heading into 2024, his two podiums having been eclipsed by Norris' seven, while Norris scored 205 points to Piastri's 97 across the season.
Nonetheless, so impressed were McLaren with Piastri that they moved to agree a contract extension, keeping him with the team until the end of 2026.
It was 2013 and 2014 that saw Piastri really announce himself on the karting scene, winning the CIK Stars of Karting, South Australian Junior and Victorian State Junior titles before moving up to the Australian National Championship in 2015.
He moved to the UK in time for 2016 to make the move into single-seater racing, the next big step in his motorsport career, which is where people really began to sit up and take notice of what he could do behind the wheel.
He took sixth place in the Formula 4 UAE championship in 2016 after competing in only 11 of the 18 races, before the 2017 season saw Piastri take six wins and six poles on his way to second place in British Formula 4, while driving for Arden.
It was around that time that Red Bull team principal Christian Horner had reportedly looked to sign Piastri to their junior ranks, but such a move never came to pass.
After a sturdy debut season in Formula Renault Eurocup in 2018, what would follow from there would be supremely successful. His second year in Formula Renault Eurocup yielded seven victories and 11 podiums on his way to the title, before making the step up to the F1 support calendar in Formula 3 with Prema for 2020 - signing for the Renault Sport Academy in the process.
His two wins among six podiums were part of a relentlessly consistent season, which enabled Piastri to pip teenage prodigy Théo Pourchaire to the title by three points, for his second championship in as many years, in two different series.
A further rise would beckon soon as a quick rise to Formula 2 followed. Piastri continued with Prema and, despite the increased speed of machinery and more experienced field around him, the young Australian picked up where he left off - winning the second sprint race in Bahrain in the first round of the season.
Five further wins followed but once again, it was Piastri's consistency which made him untouchable as he ended up cruising to Formula 2 glory by 60.5 points, ahead of Robert Shwartzman and Zhou Guanyu.
Without a suitable Formula 1 seat available, Piastri was forced to wait on the sidelines in 2022 as Alpine reserve, before making the move to McLaren for 2023.
Piastri's net worth was reported by multiple sources to be around $4million, with his McLaren salary coming in at $750,000.
Piastri's official website lists McLaren, Quad Lock, HP Tuners and Dubber as his official partners.
Piastri's father Chris used to work on Oscar's kart as a mechanic and founded and owns HP Tuners, which gave the young Piastri his first sponsorship deal when he moved to the UK, which has helped fund his career, along with support from his mother Nicole, who became something of a social media sensation during Piastri's rookie F1 season.
