The McLaren driver arrives in Japan yet to complete a single grand prix lap this year, after crashing out on the reconnaissance lap in Australia before an electrical issue prevented him from starting in China.
Speaking to Speedcafe and other media at Suzuka on Thursday, Piastri confirmed the Shanghai failure had been traced to a power unit problem on the Mercedes High Performance Powertrains (HPP) side.
“We found what went wrong. It was an electrical problem on the HPP side of the power unit,” Piastri said.
“Obviously a shame, but I think it was more of a joint effort into understanding the problem and making sure it doesn’t happen again. So yeah, we know what went wrong.”
The double DNS has left Piastri on the back foot early in the season, but the 24-year-old said his focus has remained firmly on what lies ahead rather than the frustrations of the opening rounds.
“It’s certainly not been the most ideal start, that’s for sure,” he said.
“I think for myself, all you can do is look at what is coming in the future.
“For me, certainly in China, there’s no point dwelling on it. It wasn’t anything I could do.
“We’ve got a race here this weekend that we’re going to try and do better in. That’s all you can do really.”
Beyond the reliability setbacks, Piastri acknowledged McLaren also faces a broader performance deficit relative to its rivals.
“I think clearly also from a competitive standpoint, we’re not as fast as we want to be,” he said.
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“So I think we’ve got plenty to focus on apart from just a bad couple of races, or non-races. So that’s what we’re putting our energy into.
“I think a lot of the things that I can control so far, like qualifying, I think it’s gone well considering where we stand.
“There’s just so many things to try and understand with these cars and with these power units and that’s what we’re trying to put our energy into and I feel like I’ve got a good grasp of that.”
Piastri suggested the deficit was not isolated to a single weakness, but rather a combination of factors across the car and power unit package.
“It’s not like we have just one problem that we need to fix or anything like that,” he added.
“It’s a little bit in a few different areas and that adds up pretty quickly.”
With Bahrain and Saudi Arabia cancelled, teams now face an extended break before Formula 1 resumes in Miami in May — something Piastri believes could prove beneficial despite McLaren’s lack of race mileage.
“Obviously, we’re down on laps and data to look at at the moment unfortunately, which is a bit of a shame,” he said.
“But I think even now, we’ve got some good ideas on how we want to improve going forward on a lot of topics — where we want to go with the car, where we need to improve with our work with HPP.
“So I think it’s just going to give everybody a bit more time to understand and hopefully we can come out of that break a bit faster than we’re going into it.”
The Australian added that McLaren’s current position was not entirely unexpected given the scale of the 2026 regulation overhaul, even if the extent of the reset had taken teams by surprise.
“I mean, not really frustration. We knew it was going to be a massive reset of everything,” he said.
“Maybe not quite as big as it has been. I don’t think we thought it would be a pretty fundamental overhaul of what driving a race car looks like.
“But I think we knew that this was a possibility.”
Despite the difficult start, Piastri insisted the situation was far from irrecoverable.
“We’re still towards the front. It’s certainly not a complete disaster,” he said.
“Are we where we want to be? No. But I think we’re understanding all the time how we can improve across so many areas.
“But you know, we went into this year knowing that it would probably look pretty different.
“Would I have loved to have stayed in last year’s car at this point? Yes, probably. But it is what it is.”
Piastri also admitted uncertainty over how the new-generation cars will handle Suzuka’s high-speed layout, with recent changes to energy harvesting adding another variable heading into the weekend.
“I certainly hope that it’s still the same challenge that it has been in the past,” he said.
“I’m not sure how optimistic I am in some of the corners unfortunately based off the sim running we’ve done.
“But again, we’ve changed the harvest and maybe it’ll fix things a bit. So yeah, we’ll see when we get to it.”
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