McLaren F1 star Oscar Piastri has wasp named after him

F1 & Science

McLaren F1 star Oscar Piastri has wasp named after him

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Sheona Mountford F1 Journalist

Motorsport journalist working in F1 since 2024.

Thursday 28 May 2026 22:42

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A new species of wasp has been named after McLaren F1 star Oscar Piastri, although it probably won't be hovering around your picnic this summer.

In a research article for Palaeoworld: Volume 35, Issue 3, titled 'New flat wasps (Hymenoptera: Bethylidae) from the middle Cretaceous Kachin amber of Myanmar', it was revealed that a newly discovered species of wasp has been named after Piastri.

The research was undertaken by Corentin Jouault from the University of Oxford, Di-Ying Huang from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China, and Celso O. Azevedo, from the Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo in Brazil.

So how exactly did the species of wasp come to be named after a Formula 1 driver?

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Goodbye Papaya rules, hello Gwesped rules

The species named specifically after Piastri - Gwesped piastrii - is said to be a 98-million-year-old fossil and was initially discovered in samples from the Noije Bum Hill, Hukawng Valley, Kachin State in Myanmar, preserved in amber.

The Gwesped piastrii species is just 1.15mm long, and the fossil is from the middle Cretaceous period and is about 30 million years older than the T-Rex dinosaur.

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In the rest of the body description, the researchers state that the Gwesped piastrii is 'body depressed and sparsely pubescent'.

But this isn't the reason the wasp is named after Piastri. The researchers chose to honour Piastri's achievements in F1 because the amber colour of the wasp recalled to the first author the iconic McLaren orange.

And the best part? Piastri acknowledged the honour himself by changing his Instagram bio and adding a picture of a bee.

F1 McLaren Oscar Piastri