Oscar Piastri McLaren truth to worry Lando Norris, rule flaw behind Ollie Bearman crash

“It turns out when we start these things we’re pretty good!”

Oscar Piastri’s second-place finish at the Japanese Grand Prix was a moment of validation, relief and breakthrough all mixed into one.

The Australian has suffered a historically shocking opening to the season, with an unprecedented two successive failures to start the first two grands prix.

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With so few laps under his belt and with McLaren appearing to toil in the early days of these new regulations, Piastri’s 2026 outlook was almost completely obscured. The drive who had impressively contended for the title just a few months earlier in only his third campaign appeared unmoored from the season.

It took him only one start to remind Formula 1 that his grim statistics had nothing to do with him.

On his cleanest weekend of the season and with one of the most effective performances of his career, Piastri qualified third, led from the first lap and was on track to win the Japanese Grand Prix in an inferior car before a safety car intervened to put Andrea Kimi Antonelli into a lead his car ensured would be untouchable.

The Italian powered forward to make history of his own. But Piastri in P2 offered a glimpse of a future he and McLaren might still be able to make for themselves in 2026.

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‘THE BEST VERSION OF OSCAR’

The all-new rules have put a premium on seat time in 2026. It’s not just that these cars are new; it’s that the way you extract speed from these engines is completely different to what came before and is sometimes even counterintuitive for the drivers.

Piastri, having completed just 19 racing laps before arriving in Japan, lined up on the grid in Suzuka with an experience deficit that should have made a strong result difficult to achieve considering his Mercedes and Ferrari rivals had already enjoyed several tense battles between themselves.

If he was suffering from the lack of drive time, however, he didn’t show it.

A sizzling start got him into the lead immediately, and a superb defensive drive, equally tactical and forceful, improbably kept him there ahead of George Russell in a much faster Mercedes.

He kept it up so long that Russell’s assault was eventually broken, and the two drivers made their sole pit stops without swapping position. Piastri still had half a race to go with a defensive posture, but he was in a winning position.

But then the safety car came out.

Antonelli, yet to pit, capitalised with a cheap stop and took the lead. In a much faster car, he was impossible to catch.

Instead Piastri’s centimetre-perfect execution would be to hold P2, and he duly came home with McLaren’s best result of the season.

“I think this weekend was probably one of my best weekends in F1,” said the nine-time grand prix winner. “It felt like I hit the ground running in practice. In qualifying I think we did a really good job of getting the car into the window I was happy with on Friday. I felt like I drove well in qualifying.

“In the race there wasn’t anything more we could have done. We got a good start. The pace was good. I felt like I was strategic or smart with how I used the boost and how I managed that side of racing.

“Our strategy was good; we didn’t blink too early. Obviously the safety car was a shame, but I think as race weekends go, we couldn’t have done any better than that.

“I’m very happy with the performance I put in; I’m very happy with the performance from the whole team.

“We’ve got a long way to go, but we showed that if we get everything as good as we can get it, then we can cause a few headaches.”

Team principal Andrea Stella praised Piastri’s attitude amid the brutal start to the season, telling journalists in Suzuka that he’d found another level and, in turn, driven the team to greater heights despite the struggles.

“Despite Oscar not having started the two main races at the start of the 2026 season, based on what we have seen in testing, in practice, in qualifying, based on his overall attitude and mental strength, I think we are seeing the best version of Oscar, the strongest Oscar since he’s been in Formula 1,” enthused McLaren principal Andrea Stella.

“I think today finally he had an opportunity to demonstrate it, and he has done it in its full extent.

“If we think of the home race, where you are not in a condition to start for a situation that was completely avoidable, it can really bog you down, but if anything, I think we’ve seen his steadiness, his strength — and a strength that has been able to be passed on to the team.

“The team gets a lot of inspiration from the charismatic leadership that the drivers can offer. That’s been definitely a boost for the entire team to go through the adversity.

“Really well done to Oscar for the way he’s been facing this start of the season.”

COULD MCLAREN’S RESURGENCE HAVE DELIVERED VICTORY?

As well as Piastri drove, that he was in contention to win this race was a surprise to McLaren, which had predicted on Saturday night that the team would likely find itself behind both Mercedes and Ferrari at the chequered flag, just as it had done in Australia and China.

Though Antonelli demonstrated in the second stint that the Mercedes car remains comfortably faster than any other, Piastri proved that McLaren wasn’t so slow as to be an easybeat in the race if it could take track position.

But McLaren knows that its car isn’t a match for the leaders. The bugbear of the opening two rounds was that its engine also wasn’t a match for Mercedes despite being the same model.

In qualifying, however, that gap in understanding of how to run the engine appeared to close, and the race demonstrated the same, with Piastri able to outwit Russell with his usage of the hybrid motor.

“We were surprised ourselves, especially at the end of the first stint, where we not only were able to keep Russell behind but were also opening the gap at the end of the first stint,” Stella said.

“I think today we confirmed the progress that we saw yesterday in qualifying.”

For a time Piastri seemed close to certain for victory, having held off Russell and beaten him in the pit stops too, only for the safety car to drop him to second.

It begs the question: could — should — Piastri have won that race?

“I would have loved to have seen how it would have panned out,” he said with a knowing smile, and when asked whether he felt this race proved Mercedes could be beaten, he was unequivocal.

“Yes,” he said. “I think the fact that I could keep George behind for so long was really encouraging.

“I’m confident that we can get there, but we’ve still got some work to do.”

And it’s a lot of work still to do. There’s no sugar-coating the 14-second advantage Antonelli opened up easily after the safety car.

Antonelli’s pace raises some doubt about whether Piastri could have won the race given the Italian was clearly quicker than Russell this weekend — though, then again, he struggled to pass Lando Norris early in the race.

Stella also thinks Ferrari still looks stronger through the corners, with the power unit making the difference between them.

But after a challenging opening phase of the season, McLaren will take the result. It’s confident it’s on the right track, and now it has the silverware to prove it during the long April break.

BEARMAN CRASH REVEALS UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH ABOUT NEW RULES

That pivotal safety car was triggered by a sickening crash for Oliver Bearman, who limped away from his smashed-up Haas having sustained a 50 g impact at Spoon.

Bearman left the road at 308 kilometres per hour attempting to avoid what would have been an aeroplane accident with Franco Colapinto.

The Briton was chasing the Argentine for 17th place out of the hairpin. As he rounded turn 12, Colapinto’s rear lights flashed red twice, signifying he was out of battery.

Bearman, meanwhile, was holding down his boost button.

The speed delta was suddenly a monstrous 50 kilometres per hour — enormous for two drivers at full throttle.

Bearman swung left in equal parts to try to make a move and to avoid a crash, but he ended up on the grass, where he lost control of the car and triggered the smash.

It was exactly the sort of incident many in the sport had feared would be inevitable this season.

The 2026 engine doesn’t work like a regular racing motor because it is constantly charging and discharging the battery in a way that materially impacts power output. When a driver presses the boost button, they have access to 750 kilowatts. When they run out of battery, they have just 400 kilowatts, and depending on where they are around the track, some of that power could be directed to charging the battery, creating an even bigger disparity.

And because every power unit manufacturer charges and discharges the battery differently — that is, charge and deploy at different parts of the track — and because some are just more powerful or more efficient than others, the manifestation of these sorts of closing speeds are unpredictable. It’s not as if every car is charging, discharging and running empty at the same parts of the track.

“We’ve been warning them about this happening,” Carlos Sainz, a director of the Grand Prix Drivers Association, told Sky Sports. “These kinds of closing speeds and these kinds of accidents were always going to happen, and I’m not very happy with what we’ve had up until now.

“I was so surprised when they (the FIA) said, ‘No, we will sort out qualifying and leave the racing alone, because it’s exciting’.

“As drivers, we’ve been extremely vocal that the problem is not only qualifying, it’s also racing, and we’ve been warning that this kind of accident was always going to happen.

“Here we were lucky there was an escape road. Now imagine going to Baku or going to Singapore or going to Vegas and having this kind of closing speeds and crashes next to the walls.

“We, as the GPDA, warned the FIA these accidents are going to happen a lot with this set of regulations, and we need to change something soon if we don’t want them to happen.

“I hope it serves as an example and the (FIA and FOM) listen to the drivers and not so much to the teams and people that said the racing was okay, because the racing is not okay.”

It was significant that Sainz spoke up on behalf of the drivers, most of whom, for the most part, have stepped back from heavily criticising the rules.

Charles Leclerc, for example, was more equivocal, saying drivers have to learn to be conscious of their lines when they are down on power.

Team bosses have been similar, with some speaking out less strongly than others, which raises the spectre of rule changes becoming political. The frontrunning teams, for example, are less likely to face this sort of problem given they’re racing fewer cars in the leading group.

McLaren boss Stella, though, has been talking about this risk since pre-season testing, and he said it would be moved to the top of the list during crunch regulation meetings in April.

“We don’t want to wait for things to happen to put actions in place,” he said. “Today something happened.

“We have a responsibility to put in place the actions that, especially from a safety point of view, should be implemented.

“I don’t think a simple solution exists, but we have the expertise, the engineers, the variables to put in place some actions.

“I think this will be something that will be looked at in the meetings that will happen during the break between FIA, the teams and F1.

“This should jump at the top of the agenda.”

Formula 1 has a month to thrash out this issue, but in a sport of such high stakes, sometimes words are easier than action.

ANTONELLI KEEPS MAKING HISTORY

Andrea Kimi Antonelli has already made history in Formula 1 this season.

In China he became the youngest pole-getter ever, and his victory made him the second-youngest grand prix winner in history, behind only Max Verstappen.

His second victory this weekend added considerably to his collection of accolades.

Victory put him to the top of the championship table with a nine-point buffer over teammate George Russell.

At 19 years old, he’s the youngest driver ever to leave the title standings. The previous holder of the record was Lewis Hamilton, who held top spot in his rookie 2007 season at 22 years old.

He’s also the first Italian to lead the championship since 2005, when Giancarlo Fisichella, then racing for Renault won the season-opening Australian Grand Prix to assume top position. He didn’t last long in first place, however, with three successive DNFs in the following three grands prix.

Remarkably, he’s also the first Italian in almost three-quarters of a century to win back-to-back grands prix — the previous was Alberto Ascari, who won the Dutch and Belgian grands prix succession in 1953.

Ascari went on to win the championship that year, his second and final title. Ascari remains Italy’s most recent world champion; Giuseppe Farina, winner of the inaugural 1950 season, is the only other Italian to claim a title.

“I’m not thinking too much about the championship,” Antonelli said. “Of course it’s great, but it’s still a long way to go, and I need to keep raising the bar because George is very quick, and for sure he’s going to be back at his usual level, and also competitors eventually they will get closer.

“I think we need to keep our head down and keep raising the bar.”

Keep raising the bar, and the rest of the history will take car of itself.

IS RUSSELL FEELING THE HEAT ALREADY?

Antonelli’s explosion comes with the invetable by-product of heaping pressure on his teammate George Russell.

After Antonelli suffered his poor start, Russell fancied himself to deliver the perfect reply to China by winning in Japan.

But just as the race win appeared to be boiling down to a battle between Russell and Piastri on-track, it was flipped on its head by the Bearman crash which left the Briton fuming.

By just one lap did Russell miss out on pitting under the safety car, which almost certainly would’ve given him the race win given Piastri had pitted a lap earlier than that, and he would’ve stayed in front of Antonelli.

“Unbelievable. Wow, f***, our luck in these last two races,” he bellowed over team radio, likely a reference to a Q3 incident in China that hurt his chances of gaining pole.

Russell was also notably edgy during the safety car period in which he asked his team about how Antonelli would re-start the race, appearing to vaguely reference some pre-agreed arrangement/

What happened next was somewhat telling — team boss Toto Wolff, and not Russell’s race engineer Marcus Dudley, was the one to speak.

“George, see what you can do from here, yeah. Super unlucky,” Wolff said.

It’s easy to see the exchange as a team boss simply trying to calm down his star driver and prevent compounding the issue, but Sky Sports’ Ted Kravitz claimed there was more to it.

“Listen, I feel for George, I really do, but I think some of these tetchy comments or complaints are not going down well in the Mercedes garage,” Kravitz said from pit-lane during the race.

“That’s why we heard the response from Toto Wolff. That’s the feeling there.”

Given Wolff doesn’t often speak mid-race, he may have a point.

Meanwhile, Russell had done little to calm down after the race, bemoaning the bad luck that cruelled his race, while claiming he “probably” would have beaten Piastri without it.

“Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong,” he said.

“Obviously we both made bad starts – mine was slightly less bad; Safety Car timing; (at the) restart, I got a harvest limit which meant I couldn’t recharge my battery, similar to what’s happened with some drivers at the race starts.

“I had no battery to restart – Lewis (Hamilton) passed me – and then I faced another battery problem when Charles passed me.

“As I said, one lap different and we’d be having probably a very different conversation.”

— With Jacob Polychronis