Jacques Villeneuve finds a silver lining in Oscar Piastri’s Australian Grand Prix crash

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Oscar Piastri’s wait to finish on the podium at his home race continues after failing to make it onto the grid of this year’s Australian Grand Prix.

It always looked like Oscar Piastri faced an uphill challenge to record his first top-three finish at this year’s Australian Grand Prix after qualifying fifth on Saturday.

The two Mercedes drivers were in a class of their own in qualifying, and George Russell led Andrea Kimi Antonelli over the line as the Silver Arrows backed up the pre-season assertions that they’re the team to beat this year.

Some standout performers in Melbourne 👀 Who was you Driver of the Day at the Australian GP?

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However, the 24-year-old didn’t even get the chance to battle the two Ferraris for the final podium position, as Piastri found the barriers on his first lap out of the pits.

Piastri has explained that a battery issue contributed to the crash, but ‘mainly’ blamed himself for the error, even if the car wasn’t driving as he expected.

F1’s 1997 world champion, Jacques Villeneuve, has given his rundown of Sunday’s race and explained why Piastri shouldn’t be too upset with his error.

READ MORE: McLaren driver Oscar Piastri’s life outside F1 from height to girlfriend

Jacques Villeneuve says Oscar Piastri was never in contention to score ‘big points’ at the Australian Grand Prix

Villeneuve reflected on all of the action at Albert Park on his Instagram and explained: “The first race of the season over with the new ruleset, and we were all a little bit worried, and it turned out to be quite good!

“The excitement of the first race, obviously, with rules that teams and drivers don’t really fully control yet, and it gave us a very interesting, intense, exciting first half of the race until the pit stops, where normal race pace got back in.

“But we saw a different skillset today than we’re normally used to. Drivers who had to figure out live, while they were racing, how to best use their energy to beat, to defend or to overtake.

DISASTER for Oscar Piastri! He crashes before the Australian Grand Prix has even started!

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“And that allowed the two Ferrari drivers to fight the Mercedes early on, that was really cool!

“Tough day for Piastri, that’s happened to others, but at your home race like this, first race of the year, really tough.

“But anyway, the McLaren didn’t have the pace to go and get big points today.

“Now we’ll see in the next races how the teams will learn from this one, and hopefully this level of excitement remains!”

READ MORE: All you need to know about McLaren F1 Team from team principal to engine

The ‘Aussie Curse’ continues at the Australian Grand Prix after Oscar Piastri’s crash

The Australian Grand Prix was first officially held in 1985 when Australia’s most recent world champion, Alan Jones, was still on the grid.

However, he never came close to a podium finish during his two outings in Adelaide, and it was only when Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo were on the grid that Melbourne natives thought they might finally have the chance to see an Australian driver on the podium.

Both drivers did end up on the rostrum, Webber after finishing P5 on his debut with Minardi and Ricciardo when he finished second at the 2014 event before being disqualified.

Piastri was on course to finish at least second last year before sliding off the track in awful conditions, having to settle for ninth.

The 24-year-old has plenty of time to end that wait, but Piastri is aware of the ‘Aussie Curse’, and it struck once again before he even had the chance to fight the Ferrari drivers for a place on the podium.