Oscar Piastri secures unwanted F1 Triple Crown after Australian GP nightmare

Since making his chaotic entrance to F1 with McLaren back in 2023, Oscar Piastri has experienced both the dramatic highs and the devastating lows the sport has to offer.

Last season, the 24-year-old went from leading the drivers' championship and appearing to have a significant edge over his team-mate Lando Norris, to finishing the campaign down in third place, behind both Norris and four-time champion Max Verstappen.

The Aussie racer had seemingly found his feet with the Woking-based F1 squad, which when paired with the dominant MCL39, allowed him to lead the 2025 drivers' standings from the fifth round of the championship in Jeddah, all the way to the 20th round of the season at the Mexican GP.

After losing out on his maiden title victory, Piastri would have been hoping that McLaren had built him another championship-contending car to debut in front of his home crowd at last weekend's Australian GP.

But sadly, the man from Melbourne never got to properly push his MCL40 to the limit after crashing out on his way to the grid, failing to even make it to the formation lap.

This heartbreaking DNS means that Piastri not only starts the season on the back foot having picked up zero points, but it also means he has now secured the unwanted F1 Triple Crown of having a DNS, DSQ and DNF across the last nine races he has competed in.

Having failed to start (DNS) at the first race of the 2026 season, Piastri has now collected the trio of unfortunate race results, with both he and Norris spectacularly disqualified (DSQ) at last year's Las Vegas GP due to illegal plank wear on both cars.

Piastri's most recent DNF (Did Not Finish) came prior to the double disqualification in Vegas, where he crashed at the Azerbaijan GP after suffering an unfortunate lock-up at Turn 5 on the very first lap.

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What did Piastri say about Australian GP crash?

Piastri once again suffered from a stroke of bad luck, not just in front of the home fans but in front of his own Piastri grandstand, having also careered off into the grass bank during last year's Australian GP.

Though the incident didn't rule him out of the race entirely last season, it did mean he had to fight his way back up through the pack having been stuck in the grass for a considerable amount of time, only managing to cross the line in P9.

Speaking after the crash that ruled him out of the 2026 event where he was so desperately hoping to find redemption, Piastri explained what had led to the incident, failing to rule out an element of driver error on his part.

The McLaren star told Sky Sports in Melbourne: "We had a bit of an issue out of the pits with no battery basically.

"With the actual crash it was a combination of a couple of things, I think a large element of [the cause was] just me.

"You know cold tyres, the exit kerb, but I also had 100kW more power than I expected so, you put all of those together and unfortunately, it ends in the result we got.

"It’s obviously just disappointing and a scenario that shouldn’t be happening."

When is the next F1 race?

Piastri will be back in action with McLaren for the second round of the F1 2026 season at this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix.

The main race will take place on Sunday, March 15, at 3pm local time (CST), 7am GMT, and 3am ET, but Shanghai will also stage the first of six sprint races this year, with a full sprint schedule in play for this weekend.

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Written by

Kerry Violet - F1 News Editor

Having graduated from the University of Sheffield with a 2:1 in Journalism in 2022, Kerry continued her pursuit of finding a full-time position in motorsport through work with the F1 Arcade in London, where she got to meet true fans of the sport and make a live grand prix watch party memorable for them. It was here that she confirmed her dream of combining her background in journalism and love of motorsport, going on to volunteer with the female-led platform Empoword Journalism. Having completed stints as a screen editor and sports editor, Kerry landed her first F1-specific editorial role with GPFans and has thoroughly enjoyed continuing to work closely with the sport ever since. The access GPFans offers Kerry has allowed her to interview big names such as Naomi Schiff and David Coulthard and given her experiences she could only have dreamt of as a young F1 fan.

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