Piastri: Certainly not my finest moment

The Australian, last year's winner in Baku, had lined up ninth having crashed in Qualifying as well, but dropped to last after apparently jumping the start with the anti-stall seemingly kicking in.

He then locked up and smashed into the wall at Turn 5, ending his streak of 34 successive finishes and scoring in every race this season.

Piastri, the current 2025 Formula 1 Championship leader, had started the race with a 31 point lead over teammate Lando Norris, who started seventh. McLaren had hoped to clinch their second successive F1 Constructors' Title with seven rounds to spare but that now looked unlikely.

"Certainly not my finest moment," Piastri told Sky Sports F1 after his DNF. "I just anticipated the start too much. A silly, simple error really with that.

"The crash - just didn’t anticipate the dirty air in the way I should have. Clearly went into the corner way too hot and that was that.

"The grip level was low but I should know that," he added. "So, I’m certainly not blaming it on anything other than myself. Just didn’t make the judgement calls that I need to at the right time, and that’s obviously disappointing."

Despite his DNF, Piastri still leads the F1 Championship from teammate Lando Norris who had an underwhelming race to finish seventh, the McLaren pair separated by 25 points with seven racing remaining.

McLaren Team Principal, Andrea Stella commented on Piastri's Baku weekend which was marred with errors from the start; he said: "A difficult weekend overall.

"Not a great qualifying yesterday and today we couldn't improve the situation. Actually we made it worse, if anything, with the crash that saw Oscar involved.

"Some uncharacteristic mistakes for Oscar. Hopefully they were all accumulated in this event and now we will be clear for the rest of the season.

"He is probably the most solid, consistent driver so far so hopefully a one-off event for him," the Italian concluded.

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, Additional Reporting by GrandPrix247)