Piastri Refutes Alpine's Claim It Has Signed Him For 2023

Calum Gill 19:34 02/08/2022

Oscar Piastri has sensationally rejected Alpine’s announcement he will race for the team in Formula 1 next season and says he has not signed a contract for 2023.

Alpine named Piastri, the team’s reserve driver, as its replacement for two-time world champion Fernando Alonso in F1 next season early on Tuesday evening. However, the announcement immediately seemed suspect as it contained no remark from Piastri - despite him already being contracted to the team - and it came just hours after team boss Otmar Szafnauer had hinted at complications in getting a deal done. Alpine claims it has a contractual option on Piastri’s future for 2023 and potentially for 2024 as well and its position swung from being unable to confirm Piastri on Tuesday morning to announcing him 6.5 hours later.

But Piastri has now followed up Alpine’s announcement just under two hours after it was published, tweeting: “I understand that, without my agreement, Alpine F1 have put out a press release late this afternoon that I am driving for them next year. This is wrong and I have not signed a contract with Alpine for 2023. I will not be driving for Alpine next year.” Piastri won a hat-trick of junior single-seater championships from 2019-2021 including Formula 3 and Formula 2 titles as a rookie. He was identified as the “number one preferred” candidate to replace Alonso but Szafnauer said on Tuesday morning that Piastri’s management “are considering their options, whatever that means”.

Piastri is believed to be pursuing a race seat at McLaren in place of under-pressure Daniel Ricciardo. Piastri's management, led by 9-time F1 winner Mark Webber, are believed to has agreed terms with the Woking-based squad on a deal that we see Piastri line up alongside Lando Norris next year. The situation strongly resembles the Álex Palou dispute in IndyCar, where both Chip Ganassi Racing and Arrow McLaren SP (McLaren's IndyCar arm) believe they have signed the reigning series champion to race for them next year. It was started by Ganassi announcing a driver currently on their books, before that driver publicly denied this - a scene that have repeated itself today.