Oscar Piastri hopes to use his time out of a race seat to see how Fernando Alonso operates within the Alpine garage in 2022.
With Alonso being one of Formula 1’s most successful and experienced drivers, that’s a far from unreasonable idea for the newly-crowned Formula 2 champion to follow – but he is unlikely to race at all in 2022, given the rule whereby Formula 2 title winners are not allowed to re-enter the series.
He said being on the sidelines will not be a “waste” of a year of his career however, as he looks to fill his schedule with as much work behind the scenes as he can, in the hope of gaining a race seat with Alpine in 2023.
Piastri was seen on the pit wall in Qatar in November sampling a race weekend from an Alpine perspective, and he’s been taking as many lessons as possible in seeing how a team operates over the course of a grand prix – and is using the two-time World Champion as his yardstick (PlanetF1)