‘Oh my god’: Piastri reacts to ‘miserable’ F1 debut as Bahrain disaster exposes McLaren hole

Aussie Oscar Piastri’s F1 debut lasted just 14 laps as his McLaren team suffered a nightmare opening race of the campaign.

Piastri started a lowly 18th but enjoyed a bright start to the Bahrain Grand Prix, gaining three places in the early running.

But he was called into the pits on lap 14 with an issue, and his car failed to restart after a steering wheel change.

“I lost the gear box,” Piastri told his race engineers on team radio.

“The engine was completely dead,” Sky Sports commentator Ted Kravitz said.

“I guess he had to turn it off before he came into box but now he’s shaking his head and what a miserable start.

“We’re all expecting him to have a stellar Grand Prix career but this is not the first Grand Prix he wanted. He’s shaking his head.”

McLaren boss Zak Brown said: “Looks like he has some sort of electrical issue, gearbox related issue on track, which I think was electronic related.

“We changed steering wheels but that doesn’t seem to have done the trick so we’ll have to diagnose what it is.”

Meanwhile, Piastri’s teammate Lando Norris finished 17th – last among those to finish the race – after suffering a major engine issue of his own (a pneumatic pressure leak in the power unit), pitting a remarkable six times in a desperate attempt to nurse the car to the finish.

2016 world champion turned pundit Nico Rosberg could hardly believe McLaren’s dismal start to the year.

“Oh my god,” he said. “Lando had an extremely rough pit stop. Piastri had the problem. They’re slow, they don’t really know why. That’s a rough start unfortunately.

“It’s tough for Lando. He’s ready to fight for wins and world championships and he’s stuck there a little bit now and struggling.”

Piastri said afterwards: “It was disappointing to have finished so soon. We were going quite well, got a decent start and made some good overtakes. I thought up until the electrical problem, we were doing a good job. We’re still working out what the issue is and we hoped changing the steering wheel would fix it but unfortunately it didn’t.

“Obviously not the finish to the weekend that I wanted but there are positives to take, and the car seemed to have better pace in the race. I still learned a lot and I’m glad I’ve now made my debut, and experienced some of the F1 race weekend firsts. I’m now looking forward to having a better weekend in Saudi Arabia.”