Mark Webber shares his ‘ultimate’ reaction to Oscar Piastri’s crash at the Australian Grand Prix

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Mark Webber and David Coulthard have reacted to McLaren’s performance at the Australian Grand Prix and Oscar Piastri’s unfortunate crash on his first reconnaissance lap.

Oscar Piastri broke the hearts of home fans at the Australian Grand Prix when he failed to make it onto the grid following an accident at turn four immediately after leaving the pit lane.

Piastri suggested a torque spike was partially to blame for the incident, but the performance of Lando Norris on the streets of Melbourne suggested that he was never going to be in contention to end the ‘Aussie curse’ of finishing on the podium.

How do you expect Oscar Piastri to respond to his Australian GP crash at the Chinese GP?

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McLaren struggled with tyre graining compared to Mercedes, and were unable to extract the same level of performance out of their power unit.

Reflecting on the weekend’s action, Mark Webber and David Coulthard spoke about Piastri’s woes and the ‘simple’ change McLaren can make to immediately improve.

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Mark Webber says Oscar Piastri paid the ‘ultimate price’ with Australian Grand Prix crash

During the Channel 4 coverage of the race after the chequered flag had been waved, journalist and broadcaster Lawrence Barretto spoke about his conversation with Piastri in the media pen.

He said: “It feels like a bit of a curse, frankly, if you’re an Australian around here.

“I felt for Oscar. He was feeling like he could have had a really good race out there today. He’d been faster than Lando all weekend, but he was really downbeat as expected.

“He didn’t get the opportunity to show the hundreds of thousands of fans who’d come to this place to see him, and it’s a tough start considering Lando did a decent job out there.”

Webber was then asked about Piastri being able to get back into the car in only a few days at the Chinese Grand Prix and said: “That’s what you want, mate. We’re not Olympians that have to wait four years. Four days, go again, which is great.

“He got bitten hard today, just had an extra 100 kilowatts, whatever. These new cars are taking some learning, and he paid the ultimate price.

“You’ve got to put it in the bank and go again.”

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David Coulthard on the ‘simple’ steps McLaren can take to improve their 2026 F1 car

Max Verstappen’s qualifying accident and Isack Hadjar’s mechanical failure mean we still don’t know whether McLaren or Red Bull have the third-fastest car behind Mercedes and Ferrari.

However, Coulthard is confident that McLaren can take some easy steps forward in the coming races.

Norris made a mistake in qualifying that improved his times, and these sorts of discoveries are going to be key for customer teams to try and match their works rivals.

Coulthard explained: “Yeah, I think what the underlying messaging that’s coming out is the car, they’re a little bit behind on that development, because they had to take that championship battle longer into last year, because of Max Verstappen.

“They’re getting all the information on the Mercedes engine quite late, so they can see some differences in the way that Mercedes is deploying what is essentially the same power unit.

“So, they think they can make some sizeable steps forward for China. And they need to develop downforce and grip; it’s as simple as that.

“But, you know, winning is an addiction. He got very used to it, and all of a sudden, now he’s looking at a situation where I might not get my fix.”