The driver, the car, or both? How Piastri crashed out in Melbourne before the race even started

Oscar Piastri’s slip-up on the 30th anniversary of his home Australian Grand Prix might take 30 years to overcome.

The Melburnian didn’t even make it to the start of Sunday’s 58-lap race, crashing his McLaren on the formation lap to the grid.

Fresh off his breakout season in the world championship last year, when he won seven grands prix and led the title chase for the majority of the season before finishing third, we explain what happened as his race ended before it even started.

First signs of trouble

The pit lane opens for 10 minutes half an hour before the race starts. This allows drivers to do an “out-lap” – so they can warm up the cars’ tyres and brakes before the formation lap and the race proper.

When Piastri inched towards Albert Park’s first corner on that very lap, his car’s battery did not deliver the expected power. His rear wheels spun aggressively out of the turn at low speed.

Piastri was quick to radio his team on the run between turns two and three, alerting McLaren that he had a battery deployment issue.

He short-shifted between gears to mitigate any potential loss of traction from, in F1-speak, a torque spike. That means the full power of Piastri’s engine would deploy instantaneously, rather than in a linear fashion.

Disaster at turn four

Piastri took turn three at a slow, cautious pace. But he put his foot down at turn four, his car riding the outside kerb aggressively before pirouetting on cold tyres into a 180-degree spin, the right-hand side of his car clouting the outside barrier on the run to turn five.

The circuit’s medical car was deployed to assess Piastri’s condition, but the Australian was able to extract himself from his McLaren and returned to the pit lane via a marshal’s scooter, his helmet remaining on, in no mood to discuss his home heartbreak.

The fallout

With McLaren aghast as its lead driver in Melbourne crashed out before he could take up his fifth place on the grid, McLaren CEO Zak Brown was initially at a loss for answers.

“We’ve not seen anything on the data so far or the radio,” Brown said.

“We’ll do a post-mortem after the race. For now, we’ve got to focus on the car we’ve got in the race [Lando Norris].

“[Piastri] will be sore about that one for a while, but he’s a race car driver who knows how to recover quickly. He’ll be back.”

When Norris asked what had happened to his teammate, he was told over team radio: “he lost it on the exit kerb at turn four, doing a shift”.

Sky Sports analyst and former F1 driver Anthony Davidson felt, on initial analysis, that both Piastri’s car and its operator were to blame.

“There’s clearly some level of driver error as well,” the Briton said.

Piastri’s apology

An hour after his race that wasn’t, Piastri faced the media with a stone-faced expression, avoiding eye contact beneath his green and gold team cap, a one-off for his home grand prix.

“I’m very sorry for everyone that came out to support me. It’s obviously not the way I wanted to start the year either,” he said. “It’s very disappointing.”

Piastri’s non-start continues the 30-year hoodoo of no Australian ever having finished on the podium at their home race; Mark Webber was fourth for Red Bull Racing in 2012, Daniel Ricciardo fourth for Red Bull in 2016 and 2018, and Piastri fourth for McLaren two years ago.

A late-race rain shower last year resulted in Piastri spinning off on a slick track while running second to Norris, eventually finishing in ninth place.

“I think last year, whilst the result wasn’t what I wanted, I felt like there was a lot of positives from the weekend,” he said.

“This year … obviously the disappointment is even greater.”

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