Oscar Piastri Will Not Start the Australian Grand Prix Following a Reconnaissance Lap Crash

Oscar Piastri is out of the Australian Grand Prix before it begins, as the hometown favorite finds his McLaren crumbled following a freak single-car crash on his first reconnaissance lap, Sunday morning.

Piastri throttled up and, with his tires not yet heated, had his wheel spin, throwing the McLaren MCL40 into a spin and into the wall. The McLaren driver was able to leave the car under his own power without injury, but the No. 81 MCL40 sustained front-end, front-right wheel, and suspension damage.

McLaren boss Zak Brown says they don't yet know what caused the spin, and he hasn't spoken to his driver in the 10 minutes before the start.

"We're not sure yet; we have not seen anything on the data," Brown said. "He hoped out of the car pretty quickly so it's not giving us any feedback, we'll do a little deep dive after the race."

Piastri loses his chance at points in the season opener, placing last year's third-place championship finisher at a disadvantage to start the season. McLaren loses out on the much-needed data on the new cars provided by both McLarens completing the full race distance.

Piastri rebounded for a top ten finish last year after he spun out into the grass in last year's rain race, revving his McLaren39 and backing out of the wet grass to make his way back on track and claw back a single point. This year, he'll have no such luck, with no time to compare all the damage caused by the single-car crash just 40 minutes before the scheduled start of the race.

Oscar Piastri fans moments before disaster.

The Melbourne fans painted in McLaren's papaya, and Piastri's green-and-gold merch were shocked into silence upon realizing that the hometown hero would not run a single lap in F1's new car to start the season.

Piastri's teammate Lando Norris will start sixth next to his empty pitstop as under the new regulations the field does not physically move forward.

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Victoria Beaver is a nomadic sports writer who spends her time hopping between race tracks and hippie farms. She’s covered every corner of motorsports that will let her in from 410 Sprints to NASCAR to Supercross. Her daily driver is a 2010 Subaru that she refused to do the smallest amount of preventative maintenance on. Instead, she spends her free time and money building a 42-foot Skoolie to one day travel the country full time.