Martin Brundle left staggered by Oscar Piastri as Mexico qualifying goes awry

has issued his verdict after failed to make it beyond Q1 on Saturday ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix. The McLaren star suffered his worst qualifying session of the season and will start Sunday's race from 17th.

Piastri's underwhelming display will give Red Bull and Ferrari a boost in the battle to land the Constructors' Championship title.

McLaren entered the race weekend with a 40-point lead over the Milton Keynes team, while the Scuderia are only 48 points off top spot in third.

Piastri was the fastest man on the track on Saturday morning as he clocked the quickest time in FP3.

But the 23-year-old was unable to reproduce his form in qualifying as he locked up at Turn 4, before losing a lap time for exceeding track limits at Turn 12.

And following his woes, Brundle told Sky Sports: "What on earth is all that about? It's not getting the peak of the tyre grip with errors or track limits. The 1:17.6m that was deleted for Piastri would not have even got him into Q2 either."

Piastri had qualified in the top five for each of the previous eight races and claimed victory in Hungary and Azerbaijan to help catapult McLaren to the top of the team standings. But he will now be an outsider just to secure a podium finish on Sunday.

"I just went off in the Turn 12, got beached on the kerb there, and that was it," the Australian explained after the qualifying session. "My lap was easily going to be enough [to progress to Q2], so it's very frustrating to make that mistake. I lost about a second.

"It's just a tricky circuit but I don't think today was down to it being tricky. It was just I made a very poor mistake, and that was it."

Piastri's team-mate Lando Norris fared better in qualifying and will start the Grand Prix from third, with behind Ferrari ace Carlos Sainz.

Piastri will be seeking advice from his McLaren colleague ahead of the race, with Norris suffering a nightmare qualifying session in Mexico a year ago as he was dumped out in Q1 and was forced to start from 17th.

The Briton eventually finished the race in fifth place. And Piastri added: "We had a similar kind of position for Lando last year. So I'll make sure I do my homework on how he went through the field and try and do the same."