MELBOURNE, Australia — Local hero Oscar Piastri crashed out on the way to the grid at his home race, the Australian Grand Prix, meaning he failed to start at all.
Piastri had only just left the pit-lane and was driving around to his grid slot when he appeared to drop a wheel onto the kerb at Turn 4, where he spun and crashed out into the wall.
The crash came in front of what was a record crowd at his Albert Park race. Piastri had qualified fifth and had been hoping to end the fabled curse of the race, which has never seen an Australian finish on the podium.
“Obviously very disappointing,” a despondent Piastri told the media as the race was unfolding on the screens around him in the media pen. “I don’t really have many other words than that. I’m just very sorry, obviously, for everyone that came out and wanted to support me.
“It’s clearly not the way I wanted to start the year either. So, yeah, I can only apologise.”
Piastri was confused about how he had ended up in the wall but said he had to take responsibility, even if he hinted it might have been a by-product of F1’s complicated new car. It was Piastri’s first time driving one of the new cars to the grid.
“We had a couple of things going on. The first thing I want to stress is there is certainly a big element of it that was me, you know, cold tyres… I have used that exit kerb every lap of the weekend but, you know, mate, I didn’t have to.
“At the same time, I had about 100 kilowatts extra power that I didn’t expect, which is not insignificant. I think the difficult part to take with that is 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.”
No Australian driver has ever finished the race on the podium but Piastri, starting from fifth, had been hoping to put that right. When asked about that curse, Piastri just sighed and said: “Clearly, it still lives”.
