EFFIE BATEMAN | Lifestyle | Contact
In some sad news for Aussie F1 fans, McLaren driver Oscar Piastri has today been unable to finish the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, due to his car failing to restart after the steering wheel was replaced with an old, duct taped bootlegged one.
This marks Piastri’s debut as a Formula 1 driver, which comes after a slew of drama surrounding his move from Alpine, with the rising star publicly refuting Alpine’s claims that he would be driving for them in potentially one of the most famous tweets of 2022.
As speculated by many fans, Piastri then went on to replace fellow Aussie Daniel Ricciardo as the driver for McLaren, which came as a controversial decision at the time, largely due to Ricciardo’s rising popularity from the F1 doco series, ‘Drive To Survive’ and rumours that McLaren’s CEO Zak Brown had moved to sign Piastri before informing Ricciardo he had been terminated.
Brown has since come forward to state that they ‘had to give their biggest lemon’ to someone, and as the youngest driver on the grid, it seemed like a no-brainer to pass it onto the 21-year-old.
However, McLaren’s other driver, Lando Norris, didn’t fare much better either, experiencing major mechanical problems and having to do six pit stops in an attempt to fix engine problems, resulting in him placing 17th.
Many of Ricciardo’s fans have been left gloating at this series of unfortunate events, suggesting that perhaps McLaren was the problem all along.
More to come.
