Oscar Piastri unsure if ‘fundamental’ Australian Grand Prix pace deficit is down to ‘car or driver’

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McLaren’s Oscar Piastri is lost after the first qualifying session of 2026, as he does not know whether his lack of speed at the Australian Grand Prix is “car or driver” related.

Piastri qualified as the top McLaren driver at the Australian GP on Saturday, but the 24-year-old only set the fifth-fastest lap time during Q3 with a 1:19.380. Teammate Lando Norris set a 1:19.475 in Q3, to launch his defence of the F1 drivers’ championship from P6 on the grid.

The McLaren men were respectively 0.862s and 0.957 seconds off the pace that Mercedes driver George Russell set to top the qualifying timesheets at Albert Park. Russell scored pole for the Australian GP, during the first round of F1’s 2026 regulations era, with a 1:18.518 lap.

Norris scored pole in Melbourne last season ahead of Piastri to start the final year under the ground-effect rules. The Briton set a 1:15.096 for pole at Albert Park in 2025 to pip Piastri by 0.084s. Russell qualified P4 last year and went on to finish in P3 as Norris won in Melbourne.

Half a second between Mercedes and the rest

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Oscar Piastri does not know how to explain his lack of speed in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix

Piastri claims he and McLaren had expected to be more competitive during qualifying after practice on Friday. Piastri set the fastest lap in FP2 at the Australian GP, with a 1:19.729, as he led Mercedes’ Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli by 0.214s and 0.320s in the top three.

READ MORE: All you need to know about the 2026 F1 season, from the calendar to drivers

Yet on top of being slower than both of the Mercedes drivers in qualifying, Piastri was also 0.077s slower than Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar in P3 and 0.053s slower than Ferrari ace Charles Leclerc in P4. And to make matters worse, Piastri does not know how to improve his speed.

Piastri said, via Speedcafe. “I think yesterday probably painted an overly optimistic picture for us. But we felt like we were in the mix. And after FP3, we definitely didn’t feel like we’re in the mix.

“After FP3, by far the biggest thing was straight line speeds. I don’t know if it’s the same after qualifying, but I think that’s going to be something we need to understand.”

He added: “Mercedes jumped ahead, and the rest wasn’t pretty close. I think, to me, the biggest thing was we didn’t seem to gain very much.

“So, it didn’t seem to gain very much through qualifying. I don’t know if that was car or driver. Clearly, the way you naturally want to go fast doesn’t work. But maybe there needs to be more restraint looked into.

“Everyone can see the state of things. I think it will probably improve a bit. But there’s clearly some fundamental things that won’t be very easy to fix. And I don’t really know what we do about that.”

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Oscar Piastri’s sector two split time in Melbourne will alarm McLaren

Mercedes stars Antonelli and Russell were the first drivers to set their final flying laps during Q3 this Saturday, with the Italian initially moving above the Briton’s provisional effort before the latter responded. Piastri then initially climbed from P6 up to P3, but then fell back to P5.

While Piastri does not know whether his lack of speed compared to Antonelli and Russell in qualifying for the Australian GP was down to himself or McLaren’s 2026 car, he can see that he lost out to the Mercedes pilots in all three sectors of Albert Park on their final flying laps.

Piastri in his Mercedes-engined McLaren MCL40 was 0.239s slower than Russell and 0.181s slower than Antonelli in sector one. The Melbourne native was also 0.371s and 0.215s down on the Briton and the Italian in sector two, and also 0.252s and 0.173s down in sector three.

It will especially alarm McLaren and Piastri that he was almost four-tenths of a second worse than Russell through sector two, given it is by far the shortest sector around Albert Park. The fact that sector two is also largely flat out would also suggest McLaren’s car is not as strong.