Oscar Piastri reveals reason behind recent F1 misery after investigation

Oscar Piastri has revealed the reason behind his Chinese Grand Prix failure, which added to the misery he has endured at the start of the new F1 season.

Piastri has failed to start the opening two grands prix in Australia and China, becoming the first driver to achieve such an ignominious feat since the founder of the team he drives for, Bruce McLaren, in 1958.

The Australian initially crashed out on the reconnaissance lap of his home race at Melbourne's Albert Park. A week later, at the Shanghai International Circuit, his MCL60 had to be wheeled off the grid due to an issue.

Remarkably, team-mate Lando Norris also failed to start due to completely unrelated problem.

Ahead of this weekend's Japanese GP, asked what McLaren's investigations had unearthed in tandem with power unit supplier, Mercedes High Performance Powertrains, speaking to the media, including RacingNews365, Piastri said: "We found that what went wrong was an electrical problem on the HPP side of the power unit.

"Obviously, a shame. We've put a lot of joint effort into understanding the problem to make sure it doesn't happen again. We know what went wrong, at least."

In contrast, Mercedes has enjoyed a stellar start to the campaign, finishing one-two in each race, with George Russell and Kimi Antonelli scoring a victory apiece.

Piastri is adamant that HPP is doing all it can to assist McLaren. 

"There's not much we can do as a team, apart from learn from what went wrong and go forward," said Piastri. "In China, in particular, there was nothing that was in our control that we could change. Obviously, we're working with HPP.

"Regardless of where the issue lies or who it lies with, at the end of the day, no one wants to see two cars not starting the race, so we're working hard to try and fix that."

Piastri looking to future

Piastri knows there is little to be achieved by looking back on what has unfolded over the last two races, with his energy now best placed on what he can do going forward.

"It's certainly not been the most ideal start, that's for sure," he said. 

"All you can do is look at what is coming in the future. There's no point in dwelling on China. There wasn't anything I could do, and we've got a race here this weekend where we want to try and do better.

"From a competitive standpoint, we're not as fast as we want to be, so we've got plenty to focus on, apart from just a bad couple of races - or non-races. That's what we're putting our energy into, that's what I'm putting my energy into.

"A lot of the things that I can control so far, like qualifying, have gone well, considering where we stand. There are just so many things to try and understand with these cars, with these power units, and that's what we're trying to put our energy into, and I feel like I have a good grasp of that.

"We've got optimism that we can improve in the future. We've got the proof that we've done that in the past. It's obviously going to take time, but I think we're all confident that we can achieve that.

"We all have that taste of success now, and we want to get back to it as quickly as possible."