Oscar Piastri, the Melbourne, Australia-born Formula 1 star who drives for McLaren, is a preternaturally level-headed 24-year-old.

You see it in his affable demeanor and mellow-spoken social media clips—but it’s also reflected in his quiet mettle on the track, most recently at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in Jeddah, where team Red Bull’s Max Verstappen (the winningest F1 driver in recent years) moved aggressively into the first turn, only for Piastri to slip past and hold the lead for the next 50 laps en route to victory. Verstappen, typically a bit brusque in interviews, gave the Aussie his flowers. “[Oscar is] very solid,” he told the press. “He’s very calm in his approach, and I like that.”

After taking the win in Jeddah, as well as in Bahrain a week beforehand and in Shanghai two races prior to that, he’s now in first place on the F1 leaderboard, with 19 Grands Prix still to go. (His McLaren teammate Lando Norris , 25, is in second.) As F1 hits Miami this weekend—and with a chance to lock in a rare threepeat—you’d expect anyone in Piastri’s shoes to be…well, revved up. But of course he isn’t.

“Don’t get me wrong—it’s a cool thing to have at the moment,” says Piastri, flashing a wry smile, of his current standing. Having just flown in from Nice, he’s meeting us ahead of a company dinner at the New York Stock Exchange before heading off to the Magic City the next morning. “But I want to be leading the championships after round 24—not just after round 5.”