f1 australia — Carlos Sainz will start the Australian Grand Prix from P21 after missing Qualifying because of an ERS package issue, he said. The FIA gave Aston Martin permission for Lance Stroll to take the start after the team presented a compelling case to the stewards. Oscar Piastri will not take the race start after a warm-up crash removed him from the grid.
F1 Australia: Grid and stewards’ rulings
Williams confirmed that Sainz completed only one full session across the weekend before being sidelined by intermittent power loss and an Energy Recovery System failure. Sainz stopped at the pit entry after suffering a loss of power on the opening lap of final practice, which prompted a Virtual Safety Car while his FW48 was recovered. The same ERS problem prevented the team from finding a fix before Q1 closed and Sainz was unable to set a time for Qualifying, leaving him to start from P21.
Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll also failed to set a qualifying time and was outside the 107% threshold in all sessions, but the stewards granted permission for him to race after Aston Martin presented a three-part argument. Stewards cited Fernando Alonso qualifying within the 107% threshold in the other AMR26, Stroll’s career record and familiarity with the circuit, and a decision taken out of prudence tied to a damaged oil line and a power unit issue on the ICE side. Aston Martin’s weekend tally for Stroll was 16 laps, none on Saturday, and his best lap was seven seconds slower than the pole time named in the stewards’ summary.
The f1 australia weekend was further hit when Oscar Piastri crashed out during the warm-up lap and will not take the start of the race.
Immediate reactions
“We had an ERS package issue and we didn’t manage to solve it in time for Qualifying, ” Carlos Sainz, Driver, Williams, said. “No laps in FP2, no laps in FP3, no laps in Q1 so a very disappointing first weekend with this set of regulations. ”
Alex Albon, Driver, Williams, added detail on his own running: “We’ve been on the back foot with Carlos obviously missing out on a lot of running. On our side, we’ve had a lot of technical issues as well. We’ve been fighting fires a little bit. ”
Shintaro Orihara, Chief Engineer, Honda, described ongoing engineering work on Aston Martin’s power unit package: “We continue to see signs in our data that the battery vibrations have decreased since Bahrain testing, and we will continue to work further on this. ”
Antony Davidson, Former F1 driver, offered an immediate technical read on a separate incident involving a driver losing control on cold tyres, describing it as appearing to be a combination of driver and mechanical factors and referencing a possible torque spike focused on the battery.
Background and what’s next
Sainz warned this was a difficult opening weekend under the new regulations and specifically referenced the challenge of not having race mileage ahead of the next event. “Even going into China next weekend, not being able to do mileage this weekend and not being able to do a Qualifying session for the first time is not ideal to start the year, ” he said.
Aston Martin intends for Lance Stroll to race, and Honda says counter-measures on battery vibration have shown some improvement and will continue. Teams will leave Melbourne facing immediate repair and analysis work as they head to the next round; Sainz said he hopes the issues can be addressed before China next weekend, while engineers for Williams and Aston Martin continue targeted fixes following the f1 australia opener.
