Oscar Piastri Ends Partnership with Mark Webber and Ann Neal
Oscar Piastri has ended his long-running management partnership with Mark Webber and Ann Neal, closing a chapter that helped drag him from the brink of F1 limbo to the sharp end of the grid.
The split was confirmed in a statement issued on behalf of the McLaren driver on Monday, in the wake of the Brazilian Grand Prix, with both sides describing the decision as mutual.
From protégé to podium finisher
Webber, a nine-time grand prix winner, began working with Piastri in 2019, just as the young Australian’s junior career started to accelerate. Under that guidance, Piastri surged through the ranks, taking back-to-back titles in Formula 3 and Formula 2 in 2020 and 2021.
Those triumphs should have made his graduation to Formula 1 a formality. Instead, Alpine – then backing his career – stumbled. The team failed to secure him a race seat for 2022, trying instead to keep him tied down for the long term while plotting a loan move to Williams.
Webber refused to accept that as Piastri’s fate.
He recognised Alpine’s mishandling of Piastri’s F1 contract and the window it opened. What followed stunned the paddock: a push for a McLaren seat in 2023, at the expense of Daniel Ricciardo, that wrenched Piastri away from the sidelines and detonated Alpine’s carefully laid plans.
That call changed everything. It lifted Piastri clear of the backmarker grind, dropped him into a rising McLaren, and turned him into an F1 podium finisher in his rookie season.
Titles, tension and a turning tide
The trajectory only sharpened. Piastri’s first grand prix victories arrived in 2024. In 2025, he came within touching distance of the world championship, missing out only narrowly after a season-long fight.
His camp, led by Webber and Neal, capitalised on that momentum. In March last year they secured a new multi-year deal with McLaren. Even this summer, as rumours swirled around a potential Max Verstappen move to the team and whispers suggested Piastri might look elsewhere, Webber insisted his driver remained content with the contract.
Yet the relationship between driver and management had already begun to evolve.
Where Webber had once been a permanent fixture at Piastri’s side in the paddock, his and Neal’s presence faded this year. During pre-season testing, Piastri framed it as a “step back”, explaining that their role had shifted more “behind the scenes”.
That followed a bruising 2025 campaign inside McLaren. As the team tried to juggle a title fight involving both Piastri and Lando Norris, the Australian often felt he drew the short straw. Key strategy calls and internal balancing acts left him on the rough end of decisions more than once, culminating in a damaging slump in the final quarter of the year that wrecked his championship tilt.
Webber did not hide his displeasure with how McLaren handled those moments, nor with the explanations that followed. Whether that ever hardened into real tension between the team and Piastri’s camp was never publicly acknowledged, but the fault lines were visible enough.
By 2026, Piastri was downplaying any sense of drama, insisting the reduced trackside role was “just taking a bit of a step back”. Now that step has become a full separation.
A clean break and a new phase
“Following our reduced trackside involvement this season, we have collectively agreed that now is an appropriate time to bring our management agreement to a close,” Webber said, confirming the end of a partnership that had steered Piastri from junior hopeful to F1 race winner.
“This will allow Oscar to build on his achievements under a new management structure, and for us to embark on our new ventures. We wish Oscar all the very best for a long and successful career.”
The details of Piastri’s next management setup remain under wraps, but the stakes are obvious. He is already a proven race winner, a near-champion, and a central figure in any conversation about F1’s future.
Now he steps into that future without the man who fought to get his name on the grid in the first place.
