Oscar Piastri now has a 98-million-year-old wasp named after him, and the reason scientists chose him is better than the honor itself.
Researchers at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology were examining a tiny fossilized wasp preserved in Burmese amber when the lead author noticed the color of the piece.
The paper, published in the journal Palaeoworld in June 2026, explains that the species was named after the McLaren driver because the amber “recalled to the first author the iconic McLaren orange.”
Oscar Piastri gets a prehistoric namesake
The wasp, a female specimen measuring roughly 2.3 millimeters (0.09 inches), belonged to an extinct subfamily called Lancepyrinae and lived during the middle Cretaceous period, around 98 million years ago.
She spent those 98 million years preserved inside a rectangular piece of amber alongside a cluster of plant trichomes, which is not as glamorous as a podium but gets the job done.
The new species, named Gwesped piastrii, can be distinguished from its closest relative by its higher number of flagellomeres and distinctive forewing venation.
The paper also cited Piastri’s achievements in Formula 1 as part of the justification for the name, and specified that the epithet should be treated as a noun in the genitive case, which is the kind of detail that would look strange on a winner’s trophy.
Piastri has not commented publicly on his prehistoric namesake.
If you’re a fan of F1 stories with a strange twist, Max Verstappen compared the sport to Mario Kart after new rule changes came into effect, while Piastri himself made headlines earlier this year for blanking Brad Pitt on the set of the F1 movie for a very good reason.
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