Who is Oscar Piastri? His mum gives priceless glimpse into personal side of Aussie F1 ace

MELBOURNE: Chocolatey Big Ms and cheese-covered parmys. Real-fast McLarens but not Melbourne coffees.

These are a few of Oscar Piastri's favourite things, just as long as you get the right chocolate Big M.

"The original chocolate – not whatever that experiment they tried was," he said at a sponsor event attended by Wide World of Sports in Melbourne.

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"(And) I don't drink coffee. It's very disappointing for literally every single person who asks me where to get coffee in Melbourne.

"I don't have any good recommendations. I normally just leave that to someone else to find out for me, and then I pass it on like it's my own information."

And where's his go-to parmy? Or parma, as he calls them.

"I don't really have one place to get one, but Mum's local, that's pretty good. I normally just try and get one wherever I can fit it in, wherever it's on the menu.

"But let's be honest – it's pretty hard to get a parma that wrong."

Speaking of his mum, he sheepishly admitted he'd forgotten to tell her about the contract extension before it was announced on Wednesday morning, despite having had dinner at home on Sunday night.

"She wouldn't have been expecting it because I was still signed up for another two seasons. So a nice morning surprise for her this morning.

"But I did forget. Sorry."

As the world has got to know Oscar Piastri the race car driver, these little tidbits gave fans a little insight into Oscar Piastri the person.

Speaking on Melbourne radio on Friday, his mum, Nicole, offered another – don't ever ask him to fry you an egg.

"He's really bad at cooking eggs," she said on Nova 100's Jase & Lauren.

"What's funny is when he got locked down with us (during the pandemic), his three sisters taught him how to cook eggs. They're really, really good at it.

"Then when he went back overseas ... they did like a team challenge cooking eggs, and they filmed it, and they put it on YouTube, and they were sitting there screaming at the screen because everything they told him not to do, he did."

Thankfully, the ability to fry an egg is not a prerequisite to being a fast race car driver.

The 2025 season is shaping up as a different one for the 23-year-old Melburnian.

Off the back of a drought-breaking constructors' title in 2024, his McLaren team goes into Melbourne as favourites for at least one, if not both, world titles.

Piastri enters his home race with a genuine chance to win. His contract extension – it will keep him at McLaren until at least the end of 2028 – must have provided a well-timed boost.

"It was a great season, and hopefully, we can continue that from the start of this year," Piastri said.

"I think last season, the first few races is where we lacked a little bit of performance, and hopefully this year we can start off on how we ended."

The technical rules haven't changed much from last year, and testing from Bahrain suggests McLaren once again has a fast, reliable car with which Piastri and Norris should be able to fight at the front.

"Bahrain did look good, but you never quite know what everybody's hiding in testing," he said.

"Maybe we were hiding something? You never know, so we'll wait and see. We won't properly know until qualifying on Saturday."

When the F1 circus last visited Melbourne, Piastri was still a bit of a rookie. But now, with two wins under his belt, he's proven to himself as much as the rest of the world that his best is good enough to beat the best.

His win at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was validation of the potential he'd long been touted to have. He withstood 19 laps of immense pressure from the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc to take victory.

Many believe his first win in Hungary carries an asterisk, given that he only won the race because of team orders. Piastri led the early going before McLaren's own strategy allowed Norris to take the lead. Norris begrudgingly gave up a healthy lead to let him pass in the dying laps.

Regardless, it's all experience Piastri needs if he's going to challenge for a world title.

"It is definitely different this time around from so many angles," Piastri said of returning to Melbourne.

"Personally, having a couple of wins since the last time I was here is pretty special to have under my belt. For the team to be coming in, not just to the season but into Melbourne as the reigning constructors' champions, is very special as well.

"But I think even just from a performance point of view, I think the last time we came back to Melbourne we were still finding our feet a little bit, still had some things to iron out.

"This year, I think we're as confident as we have been since I've joined the team that we can start the year on a good note.

"A lot of things have changed since last year, but hopefully the success can still be the same.

"On a personal level, I ended my first season pretty happy, but with some things I still needed to improve and some gaps as a driver. I feel like I ended last season with all the tools I needed as a driver – I just didn't quite get it all together as much as I hoped for.

"I think this year, I'm going into the season knowing that my best last year was good enough to be the best on the grid. It's now just about trying to put that in place every single time I'm out on track."

Piastri finished Friday practice with the second-fastest time, just over a tenth of a second behind the pace-setting Ferrari of Charles Leclerc. Having topped Friday morning's first session, his McLaren teammate Lando Norris was third.

Qualifying on Saturday afternoon will set the grid for Sunday's race.