Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia: Verstappen Wins the Wettest Bahrain Race Ever
Formula One somehow managed to turn the Bahrain Grand Prix into a Malaysian Grand Prix. With the race moved from Sakhir to Sepang because of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, this was already one of the strangest weekends in recent Formula One history. After two completely dry days, however, Malaysia finally decided to behave like Malaysia.
A huge thunderstorm delayed the start by more than an hour, nearly swept away the medical car, apparently took out some of the teams’ weather equipment, and left half the grid wondering whether their cars had simply forgotten how to move. Once the race finally got underway, the weather stopped being the biggest problem – although it certainly tried to remain involved.
Max Verstappen (Red Bull) went from pole position to his first victory of the season, Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) recovered to second, and Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) fought from 18th to third. Charles Leclerc finished fourth after Ferrari somehow survived one of the most chaotic opening phases imaginable, while George Russell looked set for a huge result before his Mercedes suffered an engine problem with just a few laps remaining.
Sepang had other plans
Pirelli had expected a brutal race even before the rain arrived. Sepang’s abrasive surface and high temperatures meant tyre degradation was expected to be among the highest of the season, with at least two pit stops predicted and a three-stop strategy was considered realistic.
The Hard tyre was expected to play a particularly important role, with the fastest two-stop strategies involving either one or two sets of Hards. That created an interesting problem for Verstappen and Leclerc, who were among the front-runners without two new sets of the white-walled tyre available. None of that mattered once the sky opened, of course.
A massive thunderstorm hit the circuit shortly before the scheduled start. Rain hammered the pit lane, Turn 1, and Turn 14, while other sections remained merely wet or even completely dry. Drivers headed out on intermediates for their setup laps, only for conditions to deteriorate further. Lando Norris summed up the state of the tyres rather neatly: “They feel destroyed, these tyres are gone already.”
Verstappen had a rather different problem. “I actually have one problem with the steering wheel. I can push it forward and backwards on the column. Like, there’s free play.” Perfect.
The teams initially expected the rain to stop around ten minutes before the start. Instead, the FIA postponed the race, leaving everyone to wait while the weather continued doing whatever it wanted.
Bahrain’s national anthem was performed in torrential conditions, the wind became strong enough to blow people around the upper stands, and the medical vehicle was almost swept off the road while negotiating a corner. Perhaps the most appropriate detail of the entire afternoon came next: the weather radar stopped working. Apparently, the storm had taken some team equipment with it.
Sepang had stopped looking like a Formula One circuit and started looking more like a survival exercise.
Formula One discovers rain
The medical car reported significant standing water, and conditions were declared unsuitable for racing. Marshals were sent out with sweepers and, at one point, were literally clearing water from the track with brooms.
Formula One had not held a wet race in 2026. Suddenly, the championship appeared to have forgotten what one was supposed to look like.
The electrical output available from the power units would be reduced from 350 kW to 250 kW once racing began because of the extremely low grip levels. Sepang was working against another problem, too: a hard deadline. The circuit does have lighting around the track, but it is nowhere near sufficient for a Formula One night race, with roughly ten times more lighting required. As the sunset approached, there was a very real possibility that Formula One could spend the entire afternoon waiting for the rain to stop only to run out of daylight.
After around 40 minutes, the drivers finally headed out for the formation lap behind the Safety Car. Nobody knew quite what would happen next.
Isack Hadjar took a detour through the gravel, his teammate Max Verstappen complained that he could not get enough heat into his tyres, and then the cars started stopping.
The formation lap turned into complete chaos. Lewis Hamilton pressed the throttle and nothing happened. Charles Leclerc experienced a similar problem, while several Ferrari-powered cars were affected alongside one RBPT-powered car and one Audi-powered car. Hamilton required a reboot; other cars simply appeared to lose drive. About half the field was suddenly struggling to keep moving, and the start procedure was suspended.
The strangest part was that nobody initially seemed to know why the cars had stopped working. Ferrari-powered cars were affected most visibly, but the problem was clearly not limited to one power-unit manufacturer.
The eventual explanation was software-related. In wet conditions, the cars operate with reduced electrical deployment, while the Safety Car and low speeds create an unusual combination of torque requests, energy recovery, and deployment strategies. The energy counter also resets at the start of the formation lap, while low speeds mean relatively little energy is being consumed. The result was that some cars simply failed to produce the torque their drivers were requesting.
The FIA eventually confirmed that the issue was software-related and distributed an updated version to the teams, removing some of the power restrictions in affected sections. In other words, Formula One spent more than an hour waiting for someone to reboot the cars, which is admittedly not the most reassuring sentence you can write about the technological pinnacle of motorsport.
The post-race press conference offered a rather fitting summary of the whole situation. Verstappen explained that he had triggered the slowdown first, only to look in his mirrors and wonder: “Wait, are they waiting for me or what’s going on?” Hamilton compared the whole thing to the “LEGO race” at Silverstone, where the drivers all used identical karts and therefore had essentially the same performance.
There was another interesting consequence to the extended formation-lap disaster: eight cars had completed one fewer lap, meaning they had slightly more fuel available once the race finally got underway. The original starting order was eventually restored, the cars were sent back out, and after roughly an hour and a half of delays, the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia was finally ready to begin.
The tyre gamble
By that point, the track had dried dramatically. The first cars were still on intermediates, but several drivers were prepared to gamble on slicks, producing one of the most interesting starting tyre splits of the season. Verstappen, Antonelli, Russell, Hadjar, and several others chose intermediates, while Hamilton, Leclerc, and a number of midfield drivers committed to slicks.
McLaren found itself caught somewhere in the middle. Oscar Piastri decided he did not want to take the gamble and came in at the end of the formation lap for intermediates. Norris wanted to do the same, but McLaren told him no, so he stayed out.
The race finally began on lap three, and the intermediate runners immediately showed just how important that decision was. Antonelli was around eight seconds per lap faster than some of the drivers on slicks, while Russell made a brilliant start before Verstappen passed him on lap six to take second. Antonelli, meanwhile, continued to pull away.
For those who had chosen slicks, the problem was simple: they were losing far too much time to recover the deficit through a pit stop. Hamilton was one of the few drivers who refused to panic. Ferrari considered calling him in, but Lewis said no. When the team discussed a pit stop again, Hamilton made it clear that he wanted to stay out because the grip was improving. It turned out to be one of the most important decisions of the race.
Max takes control
Antonelli led the early phase with Verstappen hunting him down, while Hadjar was also enjoying a strong race after starting eighth following his five-place grid penalty. Max eventually passed George and began closing on Kimi, but the changing conditions were about to reset the race once again.
The track dried rapidly enough that the intermediates soon became unnecessary, and a Safety Car was deployed on lap ten after Valtteri Bottas (Cadillac) retired at Turn 13. For the intermediate runners, it was effectively a free pit stop. Antonelli came in first, followed by Russell, while Verstappen changed to slicks. Hamilton, crucially, stayed out.
When the Safety Car returned to the pits on lap 12, Verstappen was leading, Russell was second, and Antonelli was third. Hamilton was only 12th, but his recovery had already begun.
Hamilton refuses to give up
Hamilton’s decision to remain on track while almost everyone else pitted initially looked extremely optimistic. Very quickly, however, it started to look brilliant.
He passed Stroll and began picking off the cars ahead one by one. By lap 16, he was ninth; two laps later, he was eighth after passing Piastri. Lindblad and Lawson followed, and by lap 23 Hamilton was already fifth. His engineer told him, “We’re in the game.” They absolutely were.
Hamilton was extracting remarkable pace from the used Soft tyres, even as Ferrari warned him about rear-tyre degradation. At one point, he set the fastest second sector, and the man who had started 18th was suddenly looking at a podium. Ferrari simply had to avoid ruining it.
Leclerc’s race was considerably more complicated. He had also started on slicks, suffered badly in the opening laps, and then found himself stuck behind the McLarens. He eventually passed Norris and continued recovering, but Ferrari’s strategic decisions were becoming increasingly difficult to understand.
Hamilton had stayed out while the grid pitted and was flying. Leclerc stopped on lap 29, a decision that may have been partly motivated by Piastri’s strategy, while Hamilton continued. When the rain that had been forecast for five to seven laps later failed to arrive, Ferrari’s gamble became even more valuable.
Alonso discovers the art of not stopping
Fernando Alonso had also started on slicks and, like Hamilton, refused to panic. He dropped as low as 19th early on, but gradually began climbing as the track dried and other cars stopped.
By the middle of the race, Aston Martin suddenly had a driver fighting for points. By the chequered flag, Alonso was eighth. Considering where he had been at the beginning of the race, it was almost absurd.
Aston Martin finishing eighth at Sepang was nothing short of a small miracle, and with Williams struggling, an entertaining possibility suddenly emerged: could Aston Martin actually catch them in the championship?
Mercedes finally gets Kimi ahead
Antonelli continued to look extremely strong and, by lap 21, had passed Russell for second. At one point, he told the team, “I have more pace.” The message was fairly obvious, although Mercedes was trying to preserve his tyres and extend the strategy.
Verstappen had already disappeared into the distance, more than five seconds clear, with the Red Bull working beautifully around Sepang. The RB22 had looked much more predictable since the upgrades introduced in Baku, and the Malaysian circuit provided perhaps the clearest evidence yet that Red Bull was finally beginning to understand its car.
Max could carry speed through the corners without sacrificing too much on the straights, while the car appeared far more consistent across different phases of the lap. The result was a very different Red Bull from the one that had struggled earlier in the season, and this time Verstappen had no intention of giving the victory away.
Russell’s race starts falling apart
Mercedes, meanwhile, had its own problem. Russell was running strongly, but the team had to manage the tyres and changing conditions carefully. There had been talk of another rain cell, with Russell asking whether the team was still targeting its planned pace, but the rain never came.
Hamilton continued to close and Hadjar was increasingly under pressure as the pit-stop window approached. Hadjar stopped on lap 32, Hamilton followed, Russell came in on lap 33, and Verstappen stopped on lap 34. Hamilton emerged ahead of Hadjar and was significantly faster on his Mediums than the Red Bull driver on Softs, making the podium suddenly look very realistic.
Russell was still in the fight. Until he wasn’t.
Alexander Albon retired with a gearbox problem and, because marshals were unable to move the Williams safely, the Virtual Safety Car became a full Safety Car. The timing was brutal.
Mercedes had already made its decisions, but the Safety Car effectively neutralised much of the gap. Hamilton pitted again, and Mercedes eventually decided to stop Russell too. McLaren also came in, while Ferrari benefited immediately, with Leclerc gaining positions as the McLarens were in the pit lane.
The grid was bunched together again, and with the lapped cars released to pass the Safety Car, the restart was set for lap 52. Verstappen led Antonelli, Hadjar was third, Hamilton fourth, and Leclerc fifth. Russell was still there, too – for a few more minutes, at least.
The restart was chaotic enough before the biggest disaster arrived. Piastri passed Liam Lawson, only for Lawson to fight back, while Norris warmed his tyres so aggressively that he nearly collided with Leclerc. Alonso climbed into eighth, and everything seemed to be happening at once.
Then Russell’s Mercedes stopped. Engine problem. Six laps from the end.
After everything that had happened, George Russell had lost what could have been an enormous result. He had started from the front, survived the rain, the tyre chaos, and the formation-lap disaster, and remained in contention all afternoon. Now his team had failed him, as it had to rely on an older engine while waiting for a new and upgraded unit for Austin.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff summed it up afterwards: “This has been our worst weekend of the season. It hurts, and I feel incredibly sorry for George and everyone in the team. George drove an outstanding race and was on course for a very strong result, but we let him down.”
Russell himself was understandably frustrated afterwards, admitting that the title is now “exceptionally unlikely” after another stroke of bad luck. The retirement turned what would have been a three-point loss to Antonelli into an 18-point swing, making an already difficult championship fight considerably harder. “I knew if I wanted to come back I needed luck on my side,” George said. “Unfortunately, I’ve had luck not on my side.”
Mercedes is now planning to compare the old and new versions of its car during practice in Singapore to understand why the major upgrade package has performed so poorly. However, Singapore will give them only one practice session because it is a Sprint weekend.
Lewis Hamilton is third
The restart came on lap 52 with Hamilton fourth, Leclerc fifth, and Hadjar third, but Lewis wanted that podium. He got it.
Leclerc eventually passed Hadjar for fourth on lap 54, while Hamilton crossed the line in third from 18th. After choosing not to pit when almost everyone else did, surviving the opening chaos, and spending much of the race on tyres Ferrari had been worried about, it was easily the most spectacular recovery drive of the afternoon.
The decision to stay out at the first pit-stop window had saved his race. Had Ferrari brought him in with the rest of the grid, the top three would almost certainly have disappeared. Instead, Hamilton stood on the podium, while Ferrari somehow finished with both cars in the top four after everything that had happened.
Verstappen finally gets his win
There was no catching Max. Verstappen crossed the line in 1:47:14.808 to take his first victory of the 2026 season, with Kimi Antonelli finishing just 2.307 seconds behind and Hamilton another 2.612 seconds back. Leclerc finished fourth, Hadjar fifth, and Piastri sixth, followed by Lawson and Alonso. Norris finished ninth after a difficult race, while Arvid Lindblad took the final point for Racing Bulls. Five-time 500cc world champion Mick Doohan waved the chequered flag, a fitting touch at a circuit better known in recent years for its place on the MotoGP calendar.
For Verstappen, it was the 72nd victory of his career and Red Bull’s first win with Ford power. The victory also carried a rather nice Sepang connection: the last time Formula One raced here, in 2017, Verstappen took his second career victory. Four world championships came between those two wins, making for a rather neat piece of symmetry. Verstappen was also voted Driver of the Day, which seemed fairly appropriate.
And then there was Lindblad
One of the less obvious heroes of the race was Arvid Lindblad. He started last after taking a grid penalty for a power-unit change, but he chose intermediates and found himself on exactly the right strategy when it mattered.
Despite making three pit stops, Lindblad gradually worked his way through the grid to finish P10 and score a point. From P22 to the points in a race that began with a tropical storm, a software failure, and a completely confused starting procedure is a quietly excellent afternoon.
The other Racing Bull, Lawson, also finished in the points in seventh, giving the team another strong double-points result. Alpine, meanwhile, scored nothing, leaving Racing Bulls 22 points clear of them in the constructors’ championship.
McLaren’s problems continue
McLaren’s weekend was another reminder that its recent upgrade package has not delivered the transformation the team wanted. Piastri recovered to sixth, but the team once again struggled with the car’s overall performance and strategy.
Norris had an especially messy afternoon. He was investigated for erratic driving under Safety Car conditions after leaving the track and rejoining unsafely, eventually receiving his first official warning of the season. Piastri was also investigated over his behaviour on the pit-entry road.
Lando was willing to take some responsibility for his own performance, refusing to use the car’s issues as a complete excuse. “Today, I could have done better,” he admitted, while also pointing out that he was losing almost two tenths per lap – a deficit that adds up quickly over 55 laps. “It’s making my life pretty damn difficult,” Norris said.
It was not the cleanest weekend, and the technical issues have now been visible for two races in a row, coinciding with the introduction of McLaren’s major upgrade package. That is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss as coincidence.
Alonso finishes eighth. Stroll finishes a race.
There was another Aston Martin achievement that somehow got lost in the chaos: Lance Stroll completed a full race distance for the first time. Considering the season he has had, perhaps this deserves its own trophy.
Alonso, meanwhile, somehow finished eighth after spending much of the early race near the back. Aston Martin will gladly take that result before looking at Williams and wondering whether catching them in the championship is actually possible. After a race like this, apparently anything is.
Sepang delivers exactly what Sepang promised
The Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia was supposed to be an emergency solution to an extraordinary geopolitical situation. Instead, it became one of the most memorable races of the season.
There was a massive thunderstorm, a delayed start, a broken weather radar, brooms on the track, a medical car nearly swept away, cars refusing to move, a FIA software update, and a tyre strategy that changed several times before the race had even properly started.
Hamilton went from 18th to third. Alonso went from the back to eighth. Lindblad went from 22nd to the points. Russell went from a potential podium to a DNF. Verstappen finally won again.
For a while, it genuinely looked as though the rain might finish the Malaysian Grand Prix for us. Instead, Sepang eventually produced a proper race, and it turned out to be a very good one.
There were right decisions and spectacularly wrong ones, strategic gambles that paid off and others that collapsed almost immediately, while the weather and the technical problems provided enough chaos to make the entire weekend feel slightly surreal. Once the cars were finally allowed to race, however, the drivers delivered. A solid 10/10.
Race results
Max Verstappen (Red Bull) – 1:47:14.808
Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) – +2.307s
Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) – +4.919s
Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) – +7.258s
Isack Hadjar (Red Bull) – +8.571s
Oscar Piastri (McLaren) – +9.454s
Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls) – +12.753s
Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) – +13.372s
Lando Norris (McLaren) – +13.993s
Arvid Lindblad (Racing Bulls) – +15.928s
Nico Hülkenberg (Audi) – +17.404s
Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) – +18.052s
Franco Colapinto (Alpine) – +18.997s
Oliver Bearman (Haas) – +22.305s
Esteban Ocon (Haas) – +22.532s
Pierre Gasly (Alpine) – +23.315s
Carlos Sainz (Williams) – +25.431s
Gabriel Bortoleto (Audi) – +28.233s
Sergio Pérez (Cadillac) – +29.310s
George Russell (Mercedes) – +6 laps
DNF: Alexander Albon (Williams), Valtteri Bottas (Cadillac)
Fastest lap: Max Verstappen – 1:38.220
The championship situation
Antonelli leaves Malaysia with a 132-point advantage over Verstappen, but Max is hardly the main threat to his title challenge at this stage. The more important gap is 84 points between the two Mercedes drivers: Kimi now holds a substantial advantage over Russell, who lost valuable points with his late retirement. With the season progressing, Antonelli is looking increasingly difficult to dislodge from the championship lead – and, honestly, he looks like a very serious title favourite.
Hamilton’s podium strengthens his third-place position, while Leclerc remains fourth. Norris and Verstappen are now tied on 188 points, with Verstappen’s victory bringing him level with the McLaren driver. Further down the order, Hadjar continues to build a sizable advantage over Lawson, while Lindblad’s point moves him further clear of the midfield battle.
Mercedes retains a commanding lead in the constructors’ championship with 556 points, but Ferrari closes the gap slightly thanks to Hamilton’s podium and Leclerc’s fourth place. Red Bull’s victory and Hadjar’s fifth place also give the team a valuable haul, although the Milton Keynes outfit remains fourth behind McLaren.
The midfield battle is becoming particularly interesting. Racing Bulls now sit 22 points clear of Alpine, while Haas remains comfortably ahead of Audi. Williams’ 12 points leave Aston Martin only five points behind, although Alonso’s eighth place gives Aston Martin an important boost.
The geographical oddity will probably be what people remember first when they think about the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. The race itself deserves to be remembered for something else: it was absolute chaos and, somehow, absolutely brilliant.
Perhaps the strangest consequence of all is that the Malaysian government has already begun discussions with Formula One about bringing Sepang back to the calendar permanently. After this weekend, it would be difficult to argue that the circuit did not make its case.