Oscar Piastri was unable to start the Australian Grand Prix after crashing his McLaren on the way to the grid at his home race in Melbourne.
When the pit lane opened 40 minutes before lights out for the first race of the 2026 season, Piastri inexplicably lost control exiting Turn 4 and hit the barrier on the other side of the track. The Australian, who had qualified fifth, took responsibility for the incident but said factors related to the sport’s new power units also played a part.
“We had a bit of an issue out of the pits with no battery basically,” Piastri told Sky Sports F1. “Then, with the actual crash, there was a combination of a couple of things – there was a large element of just me with cold tyres, clipped the exit kerb, but I also had 100kW more power than expected. You put all of those together and it ends in the result we got. Obviously just disappointing and a scenario that shouldn’t be happening.”
George Russell went on to win the race as Mercedes secured a one-two with Kimi Antonelli second, while Piastri’s team-mate Lando Norris finished fifth for the defending constructors’ champions.
On the grid shortly after the crash, McLaren chief executive Zak Brown said they had not yet seen anything on the data and noted Piastri had not reported anything on the radio. “We’ll do a post-mortem after the race and see what happened,” Brown said. “For now, we’ve got to focus on the car we have in the race and get the excitement level back up, because that’s definitely disappointing for Oscar at his home race. I’m sure he’ll be sore about that one for a while but these race car drivers know how to recover quickly. Definitely not the way you want to get started but he’ll be back.”
Formula 1 now heads to Shanghai for the first Sprint weekend of the 2026 season at the Chinese Grand Prix.