Source:REUTERS/ Jakub Porzycki
[Saba Sports News] McLaren driver Oscar Piastri has recently seen a significant restructuring within his personal team, with the most high-profile change being the revised role of Mark Webber.
Webber will no longer attend every race weekend to provide trackside support. Instead, he will focus full-time on commercial negotiations, contract management and long-term team planning, and will only be present at select key rounds throughout the season. A former F1 driver himself, Webber has long served as Piastri’s manager and mentor, previously travelling to every event to share circuit experience and provide mental guidance.
To fill the trackside void left by Webber, Piastri’s team has brought in Portuguese engineer Pedro Matos as an external consultant, who will be with the team at all races. Matos is a familiar partner for Piastri — the pair have worked together before and even won championships as a team, so they are already well accustomed to each other’s working style. Matos will mainly provide technical analysis, car setup advice and race strategy support, working alongside McLaren’s own engineering team.
In my view, this team reshuffle is largely a lesson learned from last season. Piastri led at various points during the campaign but narrowly lost out to his teammate in the latter stages due to form and mindset issues, prompting these targeted adjustments.