McLaren has revealed the cause of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri failed to take the start of the Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix, with boss Andrea Stella confirming it will “investigate” the issue with Mercedes High Performance Powertrains.
The Woking-based squad suffered an agonising double-DNS at the Shanghai International Circuit, the second in a row for Piastri.
It is just the fourth time in the team’s history that its complete entrants failed to start a Grand Prix in which it has entered.
After the race, won by Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, it was confirmed by McLaren that an electrical fault on both the #4 and #81 cars were discovered, which had not been present neither after the Sprint Race nor qualifying on Saturday.
And Team Principal Stella confirmed that it is launching an investigation with the German marque’s HPP outfit to grasp the issue.
Following investigations into the issues on each car, it was two different electrical problems on the power unit side which caused the double DNS today. #McLarenF1 | #ChineseGP 🇨🇳 pic.twitter.com/nKVI0O1Pmc
— McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team (@McLarenF1) March 15, 2026
“Nothing had changed between Saturday’s Qualifying and the fire-up in the garage pre-race, but as we prepared Lando’s car to leave the garage an electrical problem was discovered on the power unit,” he said.
“We tried to fix it alongside our partners at Mercedes HPP, but there was no way to do so which resulted in the first prevention of a Formula 1 Grand Prix start in his career.
“Then on the grid we found another electrical issue on Oscar’s power unit which couldn’t be resolved, resulting the car being required to return to the garage for further investigation.
“They look to be separate electrical faults on the power unit occurring at the same time, an extremely unfortunate coincidence which meant there was simply no way to start the race with either car this afternoon.
“We’ll investigate together alongside our partners at HPP to understand what happened.”
McLaren’s previous DNS occasions were in the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix, the 1982 San Marino Grand Prix, and the infamous 2005 United States Grand Prix.
READ MORE – McLaren disaster as Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri fail to start F1 Chinese GP
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