The car of Formula 1 driver Oscar Piastri of the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team during the Formula 1 China Shanghai race at the Shanghai International Circuit on March 15, 2025, in Shanghai, China. (Photo by Marcel van Dorst/EYE4IMAGES/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Formula 1 has a wonderful habit of reminding everyone — teams, drivers, fans, and the guy selling outrageously priced noodles in the grandstand — that motorsport is essentially organized chaos with better marketing. At the Chinese Grand Prix Sunday, chaos didn’t just show up early. It set up camp in the McLaren garage and refused to leave.
Because while the rest of the grid was busy going through the usual pre-race ritual of looking intensely focused and pretending tire temperatures are a personality trait, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were experiencing a far less glamorous tradition: sitting in their garages while their cars stubbornly refused to play along.
The pair had qualified on the third row — Piastri in fifth ahead of Norris in sixth — which meant there was genuine reason for optimism. Points were within reach. Perhaps even a podium if the racing gods were feeling generous. Instead, trouble arrived before the race had even begun.
There were already signs of drama when the rest of the field lined up on the grid for Sunday’s start and Norris’ car remained in the garage, surrounded by engineers poking at it with the urgency of people trying to defuse a bomb using instructions written in another language. Questions quickly turned to whether the Briton would make it out in time.
Then, just to make sure the day reached peak absurdity, Piastri’s McLaren was also wheeled back into the garage prior to the formation lap. In the end, neither driver started the race.
For Piastri, it marked a second straight non-start — having already missed his home race in Australia the previous week after crashing while heading to the grid — and he didn’t sugarcoat the frustration.
“It was an electrical problem on the power unit, different to Lando’s,” Piastri explained of the issue that sidelined him. “Just very unfortunate to both have issues, but we don’t fully know any more than that at this point so, yeah, obviously disappointing.”
Formula 1 driver Oscar Piastri of the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team participates in the Formula 1 China Shanghai sprint race at the Shanghai International Circuit in Shanghai, China, on March 14, 2025. (Photo by Marcel van Dorst/EYE4IMAGES/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Looking ahead, he made it clear that the focus now shifts to damage control and preparation.
“I think try and learn what we can by watching the race, then after that just trying to do as much work as we can before Japan,” he said. “I think obviously the problems today have been annoying, but I think besides that we know we’ve got work to do to find more performance, so that’s what we’ll try and focus on.”
Norris was equally in the dark about what had gone wrong, admitting there wasn’t much he could share beyond the simple and rather inconvenient fact that his car wouldn’t even start.
“Not a huge amount, honestly — just an issue that’s not letting us even start the car,” Norris said. “That’s basically it, that’s all I know for now — I think they’re still trying to investigate what is actually happening or what’s going on and why it’s not working as it should. Of course frustrating to come such a long way, put in a lot of effort — not just me but the whole team — and not even start a race, so [it’s] disappointing.”
The reigning World Champion took a pragmatic view of the double DNS, suggesting McLaren simply has to accept the setback and move forward.
“We’ve just got to take it on the chin,” he said. “We’ve got to learn what the problem was, first of all — two different issues on both of our cars. Just unlucky, frustrating, but nothing we can do now. We just have to fix the issue, make sure it doesn’t happen again and focus on the next one.”
It was the sort of weekend that reminds you Formula 1 isn’t always about breathtaking overtakes and champagne celebrations. Sometimes it’s about long flights, high expectations, and two perfectly good racing drivers watching the race on television from inside their own garage.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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