Oscar Piastri suffered a disastrous end to his first Formula 1 race as he was forced to retire after just 17 laps.
He would have been hoping for a shot at points at the Bahrain Grand Prix, though McLaren were not showing a great deal of pace in their car. In the end, though, a reliability problem meant a premature end to the Aussie's race as he was forced to pit.
Chief executive Zak Brown confirmed that the issue was caused by a suspected electrical fault. To make matters worse, Lando Norris was suffering from an engine-related problem as well which was having to be managed by the team.
He said: "Looks like he has some sort of electrical issue. He had a gearbox-related issue on track which I think was electronic. We changed steering wheels but that doesn't seem to have done the trick. We'll have to diagnose what it is, but it appears to be electrical.
"And Lando has pneumatic issues. We're monitoring that, but we might have to do that again. So a challenging start to the year." Norris was driving around at the back of the pack, with only Esteban Ocon behind him after picking up multiple time penalties.
As for the team's car performance issues, new team principal Andrea Stella insists he is confident that the MCL60 can be developed into a more competitive machine. "When we say fixable or unfixable, we need to be clear about what we are talking about," he told reporters.
"The main limitation that we have at the moment is aerodynamic downforce. Obviously we can improve the rate of development in the car by having better infrastructure, by having more workforce and this is why we are having the investments that are ongoing now at McLaren.
"However, I think that for the level of talent and availability we have at McLaren already, we can recover and we can out-develop other teams because what we see in development right now is a very alive car in terms of development.
"There are some areas of the car that seem to be able to generate good downforce, like I've said already, they were not ready in time to be part of the launch spec. But this car will evolve pretty much race-by-race, with some major upgrades that will come, the first one around race four."
