Oscar Piastri trying to match McLaren record only held by Ayrton Senna

Victory for Oscar Piastri last time out in Miami was his third successive grand prix victory, the first time a McLaren driver has achieved the feat in 27 years.

On that occasion, Mika Hakkinen won the 1997 season finale in Jerez before going on to win the 1998 season-opener in Australia, following it up with his third win on the trot in Brazil en route to claiming his first world title. 

Heading into the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix this weekend, Piastri is aiming to win four straight races, and become the first driver to do that since Max Verstappen's nine straight between the 2023 Japanese and 2024 Saudi Arabian GPs. 

Should he do so, he would become only the second McLaren driver in history to win four straight races since Ayrton Senna in 1991. 

That year, Senna started the season with four successive victories - in the United States, famously at home at Interlagos whilst stuck in sixth gear, at Imola and Monaco. Three further wins were enough to secure his third and final world title. 

But it is not the first time he won four straight for McLaren. In his first championship-winning year of 1988, he won the British, German, Hungarian, and Belgian GPs during a run of six wins in seven races. He won in Canada and Detroit before a second place to Alain Prost in France snapped the run before Silverstone. 

Aside from Senna, and before Piastri, only Hakkinen has won three straight races for McLaren, with Lewis Hamilton only winning back-to-back races during his six-year spell with the team.

Should Piastri win at Imola, his four straight wins will move him to just one behind the all-time Australian record of five, held by Sir Jack Brabham. 

Brabham won the Dutch, Belgian, French, British and Portuguese GPs on his way to his second world title in 1960.