It was a disastrous Sunday for the reigning world champions with neither McLaren driver taking the start of the Shanghai race.
Piastri did make it to the grid, however was pushed off before the formation lap with a different electrical issue.
The twin failures marked McLaren’s first double DNS since the 2005 US Grand Prix when all Michelin-shod teams elected not to start the race over safety concerns.
It was a particular blow for Piastri who, following his pre-race crash at Albert Park, is yet to turn a grand prix racing lap this season.
Speaking after this latest DNS, Piastri explained that the team still didn’t fully understand what went wrong.
“It was an electric problem on the power unit,” he told Sky Sports.
“Different to Lando’s, so very unfortunate to both have issues. We don’t fully know any more than that at this point. Obviously disappointing.
“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 [before Japan].”
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McLaren team principal Andrea Stella reiterated that the nature of the failures was not yet known by the team, with analysis to take place with engine partner Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains.
“We came here to go racing and today we were not in a condition to do so because of technical problems,” he said.
“This is very frustrating and disappointing for the team, for the drivers, for our technical and commercial partners, and for our fans. We are sorry for that.
“We will regroup, we will understand these technical problems and we will go again in Japan.
“Once we were preparing the car of Lando to leave the garage we found a problem on the electrical side of the power unit. We tried to fix it up actually there was no way to fix it.
“And once we were on the grid we found another problem on the electrical side of the power unit on Oscar’s side.
“They seem to be different problems, occurring for some reason at the same time. And they were basically meaning that there was no way to start the race. Something that is [an] extremely unfortunate coincidence of two different problems on the electrical side of the power unit appearing at the same time.
“But that’s what it is.
“We will investigate together with HPP and will see what’s the learning and make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
When asked if there is time for parts to return to the UK between the Chinese and Japanese races, Stella added: “This will depend on the findings. Certainly the parts that were at fault will go back to HPP and they will be investigated.”
