don’t get bothered that much by kind of all the fanfare that goes on,” Piastri says

Piastri’s Zen-like personality, and the desert-dry humour that comes with it, is beginning to create him quite the following.

But he is a simple soul, and it comes as no surprise to hear he cares not for the trappings of F1.

“I don’t get bothered that much by kind of all the fanfare that goes on,” Piastri says.

“And I appreciate all the support that I get. But I’m here to drive race cars. I like driving race cars. I like going fast. I like trying to beat other people. That’s what I’m here for.

“I feel like I’m a pretty simple person. And, yeah, my sense of humour is pretty dry, and I don’t give much. But that’s just me being me.

“In this sport, it’s very easy to kind of get lost trying to be something you’re not, and kind of fit to a mould.

“I feel like I can just be myself. And I think with more experience and once you have some good results and you become more comfortable, then you can come out of your shell a bit more. But for me there’s not that much shell. It’s just how I am.”

Piastri credits some of his mentality on having to make it to F1 from so far away.

He moved to Europe as a 14-year-old. His father, Chris, stayed with him for the first six months, but then he returned to Australia and Piastri went to boarding school in England.

Piastri says this made him “grow up quite quickly – you get a lot of life experience very early on”.

“It was definitely a big decision, but I never had to question it too much,” he adds.

“My kind of way of looking at that was, ‘OK, I want to become a professional racing driver. If I can do it in Formula 1, then that’s even better. And the way of getting there is by going to Europe.’

“So, again, removing the emotion from it to an extent, I kind of went, ‘I want to achieve this dream of mine. This is how I get there.'”

Piastri is leading the championship by 13 points from his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris heading into this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix.

His breakthrough year came in 2024, when he took his maiden grand prix victory in Hungary, and followed it up with a second in Azerbaijan, founded on the sort of brave, clinical, decisive overtaking manoeuvre that has become his trademark.

Those incisive racing skills have paid off this year. He already has two of the best overtaking moves of the season to his name.

A brave pass on Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari in the wet around the outside of the fastest corner on the track in Melbourne and – even better – on Hamilton again in the dust around the outside of the kink approaching the high-speed chicane in Saudi Arabia, a move that was critical in ensuring he took the lead from Verstappen around the pit stops in Jeddah.

Is there a parallel between his unruffled personality and his decisiveness on track?

“I don’t know if it’s a parallel,” he says, “but they’re certainly linked.

“In some ways, they’re kind of opposites, right? My calm personality and some of my moves are on the aggressive side. But I do think that those moves come from being able to be calm and think clearly.”

Although Verstappen caught him unawares with his stunning pass into the first chicane in Imola on Sunday, Piastri has already shown he is not intimidated by the four-time champion’s uncompromising approach to racing.

Last year, in a BBC Sport interview, Verstappen gave a rare insight into his philosophy of racing, saying: “When I race with someone, he will not be able to overtake me around the outside.”

But Piastri has already proved he has what it takes. He took the lead from Verstappen at the start in Jeddah, and did so again in Miami – with a move that started by going around the outside, and which provoked the Dutchman into braking too late, allowing Piastri to cut back to the inside.

“Even without Max saying that, just from watching him through the years and now racing against him, I already knew that,” Piastri says.

“And I feel like in all honesty, I have – maybe it’s a slightly less brutal approach – but it’s certainly not dissimilar.

“Max and I race each other in quite a similar way. Very robust, uncompromising, and I think we both push the limits to an extent.

“I always try to be fair, but it’s a very fine line between good, hard racing and just overstepping the mark, and it’s always difficult to find that balance.

“But I feel like the both of us have a lot of respect for racing each other. We know what to expect, especially after a few battles this year.”