The McLaren driver was on his out-lap a little over half an hour before the start of the race at Albert Park when he spun, accelerating out of Turn 4.
Piastri clattered into the inside wall and had his head in his hands before the car had even come to a rest.
The Australian reported over the radio to his McLaren team that he was okay.
Piastri was captured on the broadcast walking back to the pit lane paddock with his helmet still on.
Oscar Piastri has crashed and is OUT of the Australian Grand Prix before it begins 😮#F1 #AusGP pic.twitter.com/5prGby7dNC
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 8, 2026
McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown said there was nothing unusual on the telemetry of the #81 McLaren MCL40.
“We’ve not seen anything on the data so far and he didn’t say anything on the radio, so we’ll do a post-mortem after the race and see what happened,” said Brown.
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“For now we’ve got to focus on the car we have in the race and get the excitement level back up because that is definitely disappointing for Oscar in his home race.
“I’m sure he’ll be sore about that one for a while, but these race car drivers know how to recover quickly, so definitely not the way you want to get started, but we’ll be back.”
Piastri was poised to start fifth alongside his teammate Lando Norris.
The Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix gets underway at 3:00pm AEDT.
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