Not much fazes Oscar Piastri.The famously unflappable McLaren driver has a cool and calm demeanour. His podium celebrations are understated and his stoic and sometimes sarcastically deadpan responses over F1 radios have generated memes.So it’s unsurprising that whispers of a potential Max Verstappen defection to McLaren – which could knock the Australian out of the papaya-coloured English team – don’t bother him.Oscar Piastri has brushed off rumours around his McLaren seat. Getty Images“I think from where I sit, I’m very comfortable in the position I’m at,” Piastri said, speaking exclusively to this masthead before the Belgian Grand Prix.The interview happens at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps where Piastri expertly piloted his McLaren to victory this time last year, near the Belgian tourist town of Spa, known for its mineral springs. In press conferences the 25-year-old has given a one-word response – “yes” – when asked if he’d be at McLaren next year, but he was more expansive about his future when talking to this masthead.“Contracts aside, as Zak [Brown] has said… I’m happy with the team,” Piastri continued. “The team have told me they’re happy with me, so I trust them and believe in them, and I appreciate their belief in me as well.”To be clear, the F1 rumour mill is often wrong. However, occasionally, there are morsels of truth buried within.Piastri is under contract with McLaren until 2028, pocketing up to $US26 million (about $37 million) a year.Verstappen is also under contract, but Red Bull has struggled with performance and the Dutchman is yet to publicly confirm his plans for next year, boosting speculation he may trigger an exit claus in his contract.Piastri understands there is “obviously noise” about his future and Verstappen’s potential involvement.“Max is obviously an incredible talent and wants to be in the best place he can be, and you know, it’s kind of understandable if he’s looking for options to do that because he’s not winning races at the moment,” he said.“But I’m very comfortable that I’m not going anywhere.”If you press rewind to July last year, Piastri had champagne in his hair and a gigantic grin on his lips. The Australian driver stood on top of the Belgian Grand Prix podium, celebrating his eighth grand prix win and boasting a healthy 16-point lead over his rival and teammate Lando Norris.Nearly 365 days later, the picture, as Piastri concedes, looks totally different.The new F1 regulations in 2026 have ushered in a new generation of era of cars and fundamentally reshaped the grid with powerhouses Mercedes and Ferrari rising while last year’s constructors champions McLaren have slipped in performance.Oscar Piastri and teen sensation Kimi Antonelli on the podium in Miami.APPiastri, currently sits sixth in the championship standings with 82 points – the result of a challenging start to the season, poor luck and reduced pace.The Australian crashed out of his home grand prix in March falling victim to an unfortunate combination of cold tyres, torque spike and driver error. Then there were electrical issues in Shanghai, which saw his McLaren unceremoniously towed from the grid before the formation lap.There have been glimpses of a potential resurrection, with a podium finish in Miami and Japan and a close call in Austria, but as things stand neither McLaren, Norris nor Piastri look like being in championship contention.While acknowledging there were “definitely still some challenges”, Piastri said at this point in the season, he feels like he knows the car well.“At the beginning of the year, I felt like the races where you really had to do some abnormal things and drive counterintuitively, actually were some of my strongest,” he notes.“So I feel like from that side of things, I got a handle on it quickly. Maybe some of the other characteristics that the car’s got, it’s taken me a little bit longer to get my head around and adapt to.“But I feel like we’ve done a pretty good job on that side. We’re just not quick enough, really. ”Hurtling down a F1 track at an unfathomable level of speed is only one part of the modern F1 driver’s to-do list. Other integral parts include non-stop media duties, lucrative advertising deals, brand sponsorships and catering to an insatiable social media fan base.Piastri’s no stranger to marketing. He recently did a photoshoot with Vanity Fair France, brooding in dark Prada silk shirts and Dior jeans. Earlier in the year, Aussie fans were treated to a series of Google Pixel ads, featuring Piastri’s trademark dry humour.Piastri says he understands the value marketing brings, noting “this is not a cheap sport” and says his team try to make things as fun and as engaging as possible.“You know, some of the things aren’t the most exciting in the world, but you know that’s the same with any job or any aspect of life,” he says.Oscar Piastri with teammate Lando Norris. Getty Images“Not everything is going to be exactly how you want it to be, and that’s fine. That’s part of the job. And quite bluntly, I get paid a lot of money to do those things.”With 6.5 million followers on Instagram, and Netflix’s Drive to Survive cameras shadowing his every move in the paddock, does Piastri think the everyday person has a realistic view of him and his interests?“I feel like there’s not much that people don’t know,” he said after a pause.“I’m a pretty simple person in a lot of ways, and you know I feel like as drivers and athletes, especially in this day and age, there’s not much that that people don’t know about us.Oscar Piastri in Belgium, where he opened up on his future in Formula 1.Getty Images“Cameras are everywhere, social media is everywhere, and people are genuinely interested in what’s happening off the track, as well as on the track. In fact quite often my social media posts actually perform better with the off-track stuff than the on-track stuff.“So people are interested in that, which is tricky at times because you know I also want to keep part of parts of my life private and to myself in some ways.”One thing the average F1 fan might not know about Piastri is the techniques he uses to get into his flow state before a race.He hasn’t done it in a while, but the 25-year-old said he often used to sing to himself during a race. He’s jokes he never sings aloud, but rather in his own head – a sort of comforting internal melody.He doesn’t have a particular genre or artist. It’s mainly a repetition or remix of whatever he’s heard playing around him which instantly gets stuck in his head and replays on a loop. For a while, his teammate Norris neglected headphones and preferred to blast his music aloud in the room next door – earworms which always found their way back into Piastri’s head.“Lando, I think, has discovered headphones now and doesn’t use a speaker,” he laughs.“But sometimes it was some of his songs. There was one country song I remember a few years ago that I was singing on the laps to the grid.“But it’s normally just whatever I’ve listened to that day just gets stuck in my head. And when you get into that flow state, sometimes you just have that capacity to do that and everything kind of happens on autopilot.”At 25, Piastri has achieved more accolades than most professional motorsport drivers do in their lifetime. He moved through the junior ranks rapidly – winning Formula Renault Eurocup champion in 2019, Formula 3 champion in 2020 and F2 champion in 2021 and has nine grand prix’s wins in his F1 career.Arguably, the only box left to check off is to be a F1 world champion.In pursuit of such a seismic goal, has he retained his childhood love of racing?“It definitely has changed a little bit,” he says.“I think when you’re a kid or when you’re first starting out, it’s you know purely for fun. But I think as soon as you start going racing, certainly for me anyway, there was always a competitive element… and that’s one of the parts I enjoy is trying to beat other people.“I enjoy the speed. I enjoy trying to improve myself, but ultimately, you want the competition to be able to compare yourself, because it’s just how I am, and I think how most of us are as drivers.”“When you’re in that junior pathway, you’re trying to prove yourself,” he continued.“You’re trying to always get to that next step, and I feel like in F1, it’s a little bit different in that that next step is… there’s no next step after F1.“The next step is trying to go from scoring points to podiums, to wins to a championship, which I’m still trying to do and hungry to do.”News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport are sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.