McLaren BURNED by community note after F1 Chinese Grand Prix

Oscar Piastri squinting in the sun during 2026 Bahrain testing — Photo: © IMAGO

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McLaren BURNED by community note after Chinese Grand Prix

Not the greatest weekend for those in papaya

Chris Deeley Editor

Experienced sports writer covering F1 and other motorsports since 2023

Sunday 15 March 2026 15:24

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It's not been a good weekend to be a McLaren fan.

Fourth and sixth in the first sprint race of the season on Saturday pretty firmly cemented them as the third best team on the grid, comfortably behind Mercedes and Ferrari (Lando Norris' fourth place owed a lot to Kimi Antonelli's ten-second penalty), before Sunday...well.

The papaya cars were scheduled to start fifth and sixth on the grid in Shanghai, but electrical issues kept Norris stuck in the garage while the rest of the field (minus Alex Albon) lined up on the front straight.

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Things went from bad to worse ten minutes before the race was due to start, with Oscar Piastri's car wheeled off the grid and into the garage. It did not re-emerge.

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McLaren. Oh, McLaren.

Those woes – apparently due to separate power unit issues – meant that neither McLaren completed even a meter of the race. That created, presumably, an awkward afternoon at the track for the team's hard-working social media managers. It is, after all, difficult to tweet about your team's performance in a race when they...aren't.

Even more awkward: about 40 minutes before the race start, they had tweeted a picture of Piastri in his car, helmet on, with the caption 'Ready to go'.

Fans on social media do not yet seem to have grown tired of pointing out that...well, you get the idea.

In fact, the post even had a community note appear for some users, which simply read: "They were not."

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh...