Oscar Piastri has failed to get past the first stage of qualifying in his debut F1 grand prix in Bahrain, but the rookie has impressed fans by dodging disaster during practice. The 21-year-old from Melbourne will have to start from 18th of 20 on the grid in Sunday’s race after his struggling British team McLaren were left contemplating their cars’ lack of race pace. In his first qualifying session, Piastri was timed at 1 minute 32.101 seconds for his fastest lap, which meant he failed to get through to Q2 by 0.409 sec. For me, it’ll be a good opportunity to get back into the swing of racing. It’ll be my first race for quite some time, so I’ll make the most of it. ‘But we’ll give it all we’ve got tomorrow and see if we can get our cars into the points.’.

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