Having raised early safety concerns on race starts in F1 2026, Oscar Piastri is seeing \u201cvery random\u201d launches under the new procedure, as drivers get to grips with the new F1 cars.<\/p>\n
But, once the learning process is complete \u2013 which Piastri<\/a> thinks will occur after a few races \u2013 he believes that the drivers will \u201cconverge\u201d to a similar level.<\/p>\n Oscar Piastri: F1 2026 starts \u2018trickier from every angle\u2019<\/p>\n Want more PlanetF1.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for news you can trust.<\/p>\n Piastri, alongside his McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, had raised safety concerns over race starts. The new generation F1 cars require longer to get the turbo ready for a launch.<\/p>\n The response from Formula 1\u2019s governing body, the FIA, was to trial a new race start procedure at the end of each day in Bahrain testing.<\/p>\n Blue flashing lights inform the drivers that the race start procedure is about to begin, so the car can be prepared.<\/p>\n The solution appears to have been well-received from a safety point of view, while in performance terms, Ferrari has continued to catch the eye off the line.<\/p>\n Hamilton went from fifth to first in the Day 2 practice start, while Esteban Ocon in the Ferrari-powered Haas also got an impressive launch.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, I thought mine yesterday wasn\u2019t too bad. I was last, but I think I passed about four cars as well,\u201d Piastri pointed out to PlanetF1.com and others, when asked about Hamilton\u2019s impressive practice start.<\/p>\n Talk that race starts could be a strong point for Ferrari in 2026 was sparked by Mercedes\u2019 George Russell. Little has seemingly changed on that front despite the race start procedure tweak.<\/p>\n Russell had spoken about taking Turn 1 in first gear in his Mercedes, while Ferrari, it appeared, could run higher gears, which he tipped to help Ferrari at race starts.<\/p>\n Piastri puts the difference in practice start fortunes down to the learning required of a more complicated launch process.<\/p>\n But, he expects the drivers will get to grips with the challenge soon enough.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I think it\u2019s just very random at the moment, and I think we\u2019re all kind of learning what makes a good start, what makes a bad start,\u201d said Piastri.<\/p>\n Latest F1 2026 talking points via PlanetF1.com<\/p>\n Ferrari shrugs off FIA start tweak as Hamilton blasts from fifth to first<\/a><\/p>\n Charles Leclerc says 2026 power unit rules create perfect smokescreen<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s some pretty big pitfalls you can find if you get yourself in trouble. But even just, you know, managing the power and the procedure is kind of one thing, but also just the way we do starts is much more difficult than last year. You\u2019ve got a lot of power. The MGU-K kicks in at a certain point. So it\u2019s trickier from every single angle.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I think what we\u2019re seeing at the moment is people just getting things right and other people getting them very wrong.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I think certainly in the first few races, we could see some starts that look a bit like what we have this week. But I think we\u2019ll start to converge, hopefully pretty quickly, if you\u2019re on the bad side of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Additional reporting by Thomas Maher<\/p>\n Want to be the first to know exclusive information from the F1 paddock? Join our broadcast channel on WhatsApp<\/a> to get the scoop on the latest developments from our team of accredited journalists.<\/p>\n You can also subscribe to the PlanetF1 YouTube channel<\/a> for exclusive features, hear from our paddock journalists with stories from the heart of Formula 1 and much more!<\/p>\n