{"id":478345,"date":"2026-02-13T23:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T23:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/478345\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T23:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T23:50:09","slug":"oscar-piastri-raises-safety-concerns-ahead-of-f1-australian-grand-prix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/478345\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri raises safety concerns ahead of F1 Australian Grand Prix"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar Piastri has raised concerns about safety issues at the upcoming Australian Grand Prix, worried about potential chaos at the very start of the F1 season opener.<\/p>\n

The McLaren ace warned it sounded like “a recipe for disaster” to have the sport’s new-look “low downforce” cars, still untested in race conditions, jostling for position, and he also brought up uncertainties surrounding overtaking.<\/p>\n

Piastri noted his concerns after a successful but long day behind the wheel of his new McLaren on Friday, during which he churned out 161 laps \u2014 more than anyone else \u2014 and finished fourth-fastest in the standings behind a Mercedes 1-2 led by Kimi Antonelli.<\/p>\n

Piastri believes his concerns will need to be looked at before his home grand prix in Melbourne in three weeks when the first race will take place since F1’s cars, rules and regulations were completely revised.<\/p>\n

“Starts need to be addressed because, probably as we’ve all seen, it’s a pretty complicated process now to have a safe start, let alone a competitive one,” he said after the final session of the first official preseason testing at the Sakhir circuit.<\/p>\n

Verstappen says new F1 cars are not fun to drive<\/a><\/p>\n

Four-time Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen says the 2026 cars are “not so fun”, claiming the increasing energy management demands on drivers are “just not Formula 1”.<\/p>\n

“There’s plenty of topics to address. Starts, and overtaking is certainly going to be different as well.<\/p>\n

“Whether we use straight mode at the start or not, as well.<\/p>\n

“I think a pack of 22 cars with a couple hundred points less downforce sounds like a recipe for disaster to me, but there’s a few of those aspects that need to be spoken about.<\/p>\n

“The thing is, everyone’s going to need different things for the start, and to be completely honest with you, I’m not sure any of us know exactly what we need yet.<\/p>\n

“There’s so many things just from an even borderline safety point of view that need to be kind of figured out on track, that do need addressing.”<\/p>\n

Piastri was talking to reporters after the drivers went through a practice start in Bahrain, which turned into a fairly chaotic exercise.<\/p>\n

He said that wasn’t connected to the new engines but to a miscommunication.<\/p>\n

The Australian had failed to get away in his McLaren but explained: “I got told to wait until whoever was in front of me had gone and then do my own launch, and not do it to the lights.<\/p>\n

“Clearly, some other people had a different idea. So that was nothing to do with the power units.”<\/p>\n

As for his verdict on which teams looked most powerful over the week \u2014 McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari all seemed their usual powerhouse selves \u2014 he shrugged: “Where we are in the pecking order, I don’t know.<\/p>\n

“It kind of looks like the top-four teams are still the top-four teams, but I don’t know where exactly we sit in that at the moment.”<\/p>\n

Mercedes’s George Russell, second-fastest on Friday ahead of Ferrari’s third-fastest Lewis Hamilton, was still adamant Red Bull had a “pretty scary” advantage over the rest as Max Verstappen finished fifth on the time sheets.<\/p>\n

Red Bull, in turn, reckoned Mercedes looked impressive as the pre-Melbourne mind games started to get into gear.<\/p>\n

A second three-day testing session in Bahrain will be held from February 18-20, ahead of the Australian Grand Prix weekend on March 6-8.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri has raised concerns about safety issues at the upcoming Australian Grand Prix, worried about potential chaos…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,825,913,2333,4718,918,85],"class_list":["post-478345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mclaren","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-preseason","tag-red-bull","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}