Oscar Piastri expects his McLaren team to be in the mix for victory at this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, but the Melburnian thinks the Albert Park circuit will bring out the most “unnatural” characteristics of the newly designed 2026 cars.

Australia is the first nation to host a grand prix since sweeping changes to the regulations for both chassis and power unit, shaking up the competitive order established in 2025.

McLaren starts the campaign as the defending constructors champion after a dominant 2025 season. Lando Norris is the reigning drivers champion, with teammate Piastri having finished just 13 points short of claiming the title for himself.

But it’s not clear whether McLaren has been able to continue the momentum of back-to-back constructors titles across regulation changes.

Pre-season testing, though notoriously difficult to interpret, suggests that Mercedes and Ferrari will start the year as the teams to beat.

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella backed up that interpretation last week, when he declared McLaren would start the campaign with a “defensive” posture with the hope of fighting its back into the championship later in the season.

Though he admitted McLaren has likely lost its advantage and that he had “no idea” whether he would be in a position to win Sunday’s race, Piastri said all the leading teams had left a lot of performance on the table during testing given the newness of the rules.

“I certainly wouldn’t be saying that we’re the favourite to be winning, and I don’t think the picture looks quite as positive for us at the moment as it did 12 months ago, but I think the big caveat to that for everyone is there’s so much potential still unexplored,” he told select media, including Fox Sports.

“I think even through testing the amount of stuff we learned, the amount of performance we gained through six days of testing, if you had have turned up here with the car we had at the first day of testing, we’d probably be in the midfield or at the back, to be honest.

“Getting on top of things early is going to be important. Melbourne’s going to be a very different circuit to especially Bahrain but even Barcelona, where we’ve tested, from just the layout point of view but also some of the challenges that presents for the power units. It’s going to look pretty different from how we have to drive the cars from any other circuit we’ve been to.

“We’re in the mix, but we need to find a bit more.”

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The competitive order will likely rest on a combination of who has the best power unit and who has the deepest understanding of how to best manage electrical energy.

The new cars are powered by an almost equal 50-50 split of combustion and electrical power, but a fully charged battery will drain in less than 20 seconds down the straight, even with output limited at 350 kilowatts.

Keeping the battery charged will require drivers to lift off the throttle and coast into the braking zones at the end of the straights, while the engines will also automatically redirect power from the combustion engine to the battery at various points of the circuit.

Albert Park is expected to be among the most difficult circuits for keeping the battery charged due to its fast layout with few big braking zones, requiring drivers to take those regeneration strategies to their extremes.

“I think in Melbourne especially we’ll see some of the more unnatural differences,” Piastri said. “A lot more lift and coast, a lot more driving to maximise the power unit. It’s going to be different.

“The cars are also not as fast as what we had last year, and from a lap time point of view there’s not as much downforce — every time you take downforce off a race car, it’s never that much fun, but you get used to it quickly.

“The power unit is definitely the biggest change for us all to get used to at the moment.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how racing looks as well, because … you’ve got power units that are reducing in power down the straights at different points.

“There are a lot of lot of unknowns and lot of challenges in there. I think it’s going to be an important weekend.”

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He also expected to see concerns about the difficulty of getting the cars off the line from a standing start to be realised.

“I think the start will be chaos,” he said. “I say that in just an exciting way — I don’t think it’s going to be dangerous or ridiculous. I think there’s just going to be more variation to starts than what we’ve had for the past few years.

“In the past, maybe five or 10 metres has separated the whole field, which is two car lengths. This year some of the bad starts we’ve seen through testing are significantly worse than just 10 metres different.

“I think from that side of things the start will probably be more exciting.

“I don’t think anyone honestly knows how racing is going to go. The cars should be a bit easier to follow with a bit less downforce, but we’ll see if that’s reality.

“Reliability is probably going to be a factor as well, so I think it will be exciting one way or another.”

Regardless of his odds of victory, Piastri said he was looking forward to starting the year with his home grand prix.

“It’s always cool,” he said. “I think for me the support’s gone up every year.

“The support I had in the off-season, the support I had even yesterday doing a few bits and pieces around the city, it’s gone up a level from last year, which is really special to see.

“I think for me it’s just pride, really, and the feeling of support.

“Having your home race is really special, but having it in my home city as well is another step up from that.”