Alpine's Piastri insists 2022 'won't be a wasted year'

Oscar Pisatri says a season as Alpine's reserve in 2022 will be anything but a wasted year as the Aussie expects to learn a lot while he's standing in the wings.

Piastri's banner year in the FIA Formula 2 Championship was the 20-year-old's third consecutive title after the 2019 Renault Eurocup championship and the 2020 FIA Formula 3 title.

Unfortunately, the Alpine junior was barred from a promotion to F1 with the French outfit for 2022 as both Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso are contracted to the Enstone squad for next season.

But Piastri has been assigned a reserve role with the Enstone squad while he'll also be entrusted with a significant development program in Alpine's simulator, all the time while embedding with the team on race weekends.

And it will be time well spent according to Piastri.

"I definitely don't think it will be a wasted year," he said at the end of last year, quoted by Motorsport.com.

"It goes without saying that I would have loved to have been on the grid, of course.

"But a lot of the things I can pick up next year, like the travelling schedule of an F1 season, having to adapt to that without the pressure of having to actually drive is quite beneficial, I guess.

"And listening to Fernando and Esteban also with a new car for next year, I can listen to how the car's developing and with all my work in the sim I can try and contribute to that."

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Although he'll likely be given the opportunity to privately test with Alpine this year most likely with the team's 2021-spec car, Piastri reckons he doesn't necessarily need to take to the track to improve his expertise as a potential F1 driver.

"There's a lot of other things outside of driving that make a successful F1 driver," he explained.

"Next year one of the main parts of my role next year is to learn as much as I can off Fernando and Esteban.

"Just listening to the way they go about things, the way they make suggestions to the engineers; the amount of capacity they have left to think about ideas and what to change on the car outside of just driving is impressive.

"And I think that's the kind of stuff that I can take forward. That I don't need to be physically driving for. That's definitely going to be an important part in the next year."

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