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On-board footage showed Piastri\u2019s revs drastically spike and hit the limiter while he was leaving the kerb.<\/p>\n
Piastri blamed cold tyres, a large injection of unexpected battery power and himself for the incident but Supercars legend Skaife believes he was being too generous.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey put old tyres when you do that lap to go out. So it\u2019s got cold tyres, they\u2019re old, and it\u2019s come out of turn four, caught the kerb a little bit on the outside and then when they hit it with about 100 kilowatts of extra power,\u201d Skaife said on Fox Sports\u2019 new weekly show, MotorRacing 360.<\/p>\n
\u201cOscar\u2019s been very nice about what happened here. This is a deadset car failure. This is a Verstappen in qualifying (type incident).\u201d<\/p>\n
Is McLaren the right place for Piastri? | 02:24<\/p>\n
Host Paul Murray added: \u201cI get it, Oscar’s pulling his punches … but something is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Skaife continued: \u201cWhen you catch that little kerb, it does just unsettle the back of the car, but he was obviously just trying to guide it off the corner and it\u2019s hit it with so much power.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, these are the best drivers in the world, right? This is a young bloke who\u2019s as good as there is, anywhere on the planet.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo make a mistake like that – if you\u2019re gonna proportion it, it\u2019s probably 10 or 20 per cent Oscar, all the rest is the car.\u201d<\/p>\n
The panel linked Piastri\u2019s comments to the general concern he was not treated fairly during the 2025 F1 season as McLaren made multiple decisions which worked in his British teammate Lando Norris\u2019 favour.<\/p>\n
Oscar Piastri of McLaren leaves the pits following the 2026 Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (AAP Image\/Joel Carrett)Source: AAP<\/p>\n
MotorRacing 360 host Jess Yates, who has spoken to both Piastri and team CEO Zak Brown in recent months, got the impression from her conversations Piastri has been told by McLaren not to step out of line with his comments.<\/p>\n
\u201cI gathered that he\u2019s been told, if you go against the team, it will not serve you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Piastri is believed to be contracted until the end of 2028 but with a get-out clause \u201cif Lando is favoured\u201d, according to News Corp\u2019s James Phelps.<\/p>\n
\u201cWould he be better served being a No.2 in a team like McLaren, or going somewhere else and being a No.1?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
Skaife drew the comparison between Piastri\u2019s current situation and Mark Webber\u2019s run at Red Bull when the team prioritised Sebastian Vettel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri \u201cpulled his punches\u201d when discussing his Australian Grand Prix crash, which was a \u201cdeadset car failure\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-534343","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-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534343","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=534343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}