Oscar Piastri’s Back-to-Back DNS Leaves McLaren Scrambling Before Japan

For the second grand prix in succession, Oscar Piastri failed to take the start, and the statistical footnote that followed told its own story: McLaren had not suffered a double DNS since the 2005 United States Grand Prix.



Both the Australian and Lando Norris were ruled out before the lights went out in Shanghai, their MCL40s struck by separate power unit issues that the team traced back to their Mercedes supply.



Piastri had qualified fifth on Saturday, suggesting the pace was genuinely there this time around, which made the Sunday morning news of his DNS all the harder to take.



The circumstances were entirely different from Melbourne, where Piastri crashed on the reconnaissance lap after a reported torque spike, but the outcome was identical: zero race laps completed and no championship points.



Across the first two race weekends, McLaren managed to get just one car to the start of a grand prix, a stat that amounts to a catastrophic return for a team expected to be fighting for both titles in 2026.



One forensic piece of analysis from the paddock pointed to a pattern: McLaren’s customer Mercedes power units may not be deploying energy at the same rate as the works outfit, an issue that has broader implications than just two DNFs.



The team’s showing in qualifying for Shanghai was encouraging, with Piastri fifth and Norris sixth, suggesting the aerodynamic and mechanical package is competitive on the surface.



But qualifying pace is worthless without reliability to back it up, and two weekends without a proper race result means the championship battle has moved on without McLaren’s two fastest drivers contributing to it.



Zak Brown had entered 2026 describing his lineup as the best on the grid, and there is every reason to believe that assertion is accurate when both cars are running.



The problem is that those cars have barely been running, and Piastri in particular arrives at Suzuka needing an entirely clean weekend just to establish a baseline of race experience in the MCL40.



The five-week gap to Japan, created by the cancellations in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, will offer time for whatever investigation Brixworth and Woking decide to conduct into the power unit failures.



What it cannot give back is the race data and competitive mileage that Piastri and Norris have sacrificed against a field that includes Kimi Antonelli, who has now won a race and demonstrated the kind of cold-blooded confidence that suggests he will not be handing points back easily.



For Piastri, the most pressing task before Suzuka is simply to get to the grid and stay there.
The post Oscar Piastri’s Back-to-Back DNS Leaves McLaren Scrambling Before Japan appeared first on Formula1News.co.uk .