McLaren driver Oscar Piastri was “shocked and surprised” by his pre-race crash that left him unable to take the start of Formula 1’s Australian Grand Prix as he received an unexpected power spike from his engine.
Around 40 minutes before the race, Piastri left the garage for the usual reconnaissance laps to the grid as teams conduct their final checks. But coming out of the Turn 4 left-hander, Piastri suddenly lost control over his McLaren as he crossed the exit kerbs, with his MCL40 spinning and veering into the wall on drivers’ left.
Fifth-place qualifier Piastri escaped without injury, but destroyed the front-end of his McLaren, with terminal damage to his right-front wheel and suspension, forcing the Australian to park his car on the spot as he dejectedly walked away from the scene.
Making his first comments after the incident, Piastri said he was “shocked and surprised” by how suddenly he lost the car.
“I’m just disappointed,” he said. “A scenario like that just shouldn’t happen. So, it’s obviously very disappointing.
“I mean, just shock and surprise, really. I was backwards before I’d even really had a chance to react. It all happened pretty quick. But crashing out of the race or trying to get to the race is a situation that shouldn’t happen.”
Oscar Piastri, McLaren
Photo by: Martin Keep / AFP via Getty Images
The incident drew some parallels to Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli’s crash in FP3, as the Italian lost control over his car after accelerating out of Turn 1 over the kerbs and hit a bump.
When asked if there is a fundamental difficulty with the 2026 F1 cars and their aggressive torque delivery, Piastri said he received an unexpected amount of power from the Mercedes engine, but was also keen to shoulder a part of the blame.
“We had a couple of things going on,” he explained. “I think the first part I want to stress is that there is certainly a big element of it that was me. Cold tyres, I have used that exit kerb every lap of the weekend, but I didn’t have to. At the same time, I had about 100kW extra power that I didn’t expect, which is not insignificant.
“The difficult part to take is that everything was working normally. It’s just a function of how the engines have to work with the rules. So, that’s the part that’s difficult to accept.
“It would almost be easier in some ways if we just said there’s cold tyres and I was optimistic. But when you add in another factor like that, it always is even more painful.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
