Oscar Piastri has become the first Formula 1 driver in world championship history to post a ‘Did Not Start’ in the opening two races of a season.
After his embarrassing crash on the way to the grid of his home race in Australia, Piastri failed to start the Chinese GP in Shanghai after being wheeled off the grid due to an electrical issue in his power unit.
In doing so, Piastri has become the first of the 782 drivers to race in a world championship grand prix, of which there have now been 1,151, to fail to take the start in the opening two races of the season, with his result officially posted in the record books as a ‘DNS’.
In 1964, Tony Maggs did post a DNS in his first two races of the season in the Netherlands and in Belgium, but these were not the first two calendar races in the season, with Maggs not having been entered for the first race in Monaco.
Piastri’s consecutive ‘DNS’s is the first time it has happened to a driver since his team’s founder, Bruce McLaren, at the 1969 United States and Mexico Grands Prix.
McLaren had engine woes at Watkins Glen and then fuel injection troubles in Mexico.
Team-mate Lando Norris failed to even reach the grid from the garage, having suffered an unrelated but similar electronics power unit glitch, and so posted a DNS for the first time in his career in his 154th entry, meaning Norris has 153 starts.
It is the first time McLaren has posted a double DNS since the 2005 United States GP when Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya retired owing to the tyre safety concerns of their Michelin rubber.
The Chinese GP was also the first time since the 2017 Bahrain and Russian Grands Prix that McLaren has suffered consecutive DNS’s, with Stoffel Vandoorne and Fernando Alonso not taking part in those races, respectively.