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Oscar Piastri has spoken of the 'different categories' F1 has created with its energy management demands after the first qualifying session of the season.

Piastri will start his home grand prix from fifth on the grid as Mercedes bulldozed the opposition at Albert Park, with George Russell and Kimi Antonelli forming a crushing front-row lock-out.

Piastri's McLaren was 0.862s slower than Russell's pole time, as the fears of Mercedes' ultimate pace were unleashed in Melbourne after bubbling away through the winter.

Although both McLaren and Mercedes are using the Mercedes HPP power unit, the gap between the two was daunting, with the energy management demands on drivers becoming apparent through the weekend thus far, including the dramatic loss in performance through Turns 6 to 9 as cars super clip to harvest energy.

Whilst Piastri believes the topic will improve at the coming races, which create more harvesting opportunities, he was unsure the "fundamental" problems could be fixed.

"I think yesterday painted an overly optimistic picture for us, but I felt like we were in the mix, and then after FP3, we definitely didn't feel like we were in the mix," Piastri told media, including RacingNews365.

"By far, the biggest thing was straight line speed, and it is something we need to understand.

"I'm not necessarily surprised, but our picture was that everyone was pretty close, and then Mercedes jumped ahead and the rest of pretty close.

"I think for me, the biggest thing was that we didn't seem to gain much through qualifying, and I don't know if that was car or driver.

"Maybe the way you want to go fast doesn't work, but maybe there needs to be more restraints looked into.

"I think everyone can see the state of things, and I think it will probably improve a bit, but there are some fundamental things which won't be very easy to fix.

"I don't really know what we do about that.

"It will be better at different tracks, and we'll have different challenges at other tracks because they are in two different categories at the moment, being energy-starved and energy-rich, and there's a problem with either of those things.

"But when you are energy-starved like this, it is a lot more obvious to everyone watching.

"I don't know what the Mercedes lap looks like, but we were lifting and coasting three times in the lap, we had two super clips through the lap, meaning in some corners, we effectively got 450 horsepower less, so it is a massive challenge to get your head around."