Piastri reveals he had a ‘major failure’ on his McLaren just six laps into the Miami GP

McLaren endured another weekend where bad luck and reliability woes combined to cost them any chance of points in Miami. Lando Norris was in the wrong place at the wrong time, hit from behind into the opening corner by Nyck de Vries, while Oscar Piastri was left frustrated after a systems failure negated any chance he had of progressing through the field.

With both cars starting down the order, McLaren had opted for an aggressive strategy that saw both start on the unfavoured soft tyres. But while Piastri was initially able to put his to good use and rise up through the order, he soon had to pit for fresh rubber – before worse was to come.

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“We had some kind of major failure about six or seven laps in on the brake by wire, and energy recovery, something like that, so I was managing a lot of issues after that," he revealed after the race. "I had a really good Lap 1, which was the highlight of the weekend, but yeah frustrating afternoon, trying to drive round the issues.

“I mean it’s been a tough weekend, but I think we are still very motivated to try and get the car further to the front. I think Baku was obviously a very different weekend to this one, where we were a lot faster.

"So, we need to understand why that was a good weekend relative to where we were and why this weekend is bad. Obviously, the reliability issues during the race we need to get on top off as well.”

Meanwhile Lando Norris' race was compromised from the very first corner, with the resultant time lost – not to mention damage sustained from De Vries hitting his rear – leaving him with no real opportunity to move up the order.

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“Tough day. We just struggled with pace," he explained. "I had a good start, but we got hit from behind into Turn 1, which then put us at the back. We had tried a different strategy, which required something exciting to happen during the race, but it didn’t work.

“We’ll go back to MTC [the McLaren Technology Centre], reset and keep pushing hard for a better result in the next one.”