A minor opening lap skirmish wrecked the races of both McLaren drivers in Saudi Arabia and condemned the team to its worst start to a season in 23 years.
Oscar Piastri secured his maiden Q3 spot on Saturday but after starting from eighth spot had minor contact with Alpine’s Pierre Gasly as the pair exited Turn 2.
The front wing endplate detached from Piastri’s MCL60 and was eventually struck by the sister McLaren of Lando Norris, who had started from the back row after brushing the inside of Turn 27 in Q1.
Both drivers required an unscheduled pit stop for repairs and from there spent the remainder of the race at the back of the field.
Piastri classified in 15th place – his maiden finish after retiring early in Bahrain – while Norris claimed 17th for the second successive race.
“I think Oscar just was as prudent as he can be, like looking from Gasly’s on-board, it looks like he just lost control, drifted a little bit, and touched Oscar’s front wing,” said McLaren boss Andrea Stella.
“So I would almost dare to say that I would classify it as one of those unfortunate situations. Even more unfortunate though is that Lando hit the debris coming off of Oscar’s front wing.
“Clearly in the data, it was a massive loss of downforce, it would not be possible to continue like that. And we were not helped by the fact that there was no safety car.
“We needed to take the hit of the stop of the first lap, plus the front wing change, plus no safety car.
“We take these things on the chin. We are racers, we don’t give up. We just move on to the next race.”
It left McLaren at the foot of the Constructors’ Championship with only AlphaTauri also yet to score.
“We have to acknowledge very honestly that then we were not in a position from a performance point of view to make progress,” said Stella, referring to the Safety Car period which brought the field together.
“So this brings us back to the point that we need to work hard to improve the car.
“We see that the points are not very far in terms of pace, this year the racing keeps being quite tight, from a field spread point of view. This is an opportunity, but we only capitalise on this opportunity if we improve the car.”
