The Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia (yes I know how that sounds, but it’s true) happened this past weekend. This race was delayed twice, and the wait was ninety-three minutes.
The storm hit around 40 minutes before the scheduled start. Cue the first delay of the race. The teams finally got the go ahead to start the formation lap, but during the lap, a third of the grid lost power.
Three cars stopped dead on track: Hamilton, Ocon, and Bottas. Both Audis, the other Cadillac, both Haas cars, an Alpine, a Red Bull, and a Racing Bulls car all stopped with power issues. But, both Mercedes cars had no issues — circumstantially, down to their formation lap speed. The grid was then sent back to the pit lane, triggering a red flag, and yet another delay.
In wet conditions, the FIA cuts electrical deployment from 350 kilowatts down to 250. This was the first time that setting had ever been used in a race this season: low engine speed on a slow formation lap, low grip, the reduced output, and Sepang’s sector layout. The turbo revs dropped, engines went into failsafe, and the power stopped redeploying. The FIA fixed the problem by deleting its own energy limit in the affected sectors and pushed a software patch to every team mid-delay.
Now for the tire calls. Thirteen of the twenty-two were on slicks, including both Ferraris and both McLarens. There were nine who were on inters, including Verstappen and both Mercedes. Leclerc and Hamilton both fell to the back due to being on slicks. Two of the nine who took inters finished one and two. Hamilton surprisingly recovered to third on slicks — he would’ve finished fourth, but George Russell DNFd — and Charles Leclerc made an impressive recovery to fourth after pitting him I don’t even know how many times. Norris finished ninth and Piastri sixth on the same tire.
The starting grid was Verstappen on pole, Hamilton second, Antonelli third though he qualified fourth he gained third after Hadjar took a penalty, and Russell seventh. Antonelli took the lead into Turn 1. Russell went from seventh to second before the first corner. Verstappen fell to third, but regained second position from Russell by lap six. Bottas took a spin into the gravel at Turn 13 on lap nine which triggered a safety car. At the restart, Verstappen took the lead back from Antonelli. And during that same restart, Bortoleto went into Sainz, knocking him out of the points and into seventeenth. Bortoleto received a 10-second time penalty. On lap 41, Albon’s gearbox broke, and he had to retire the car. This triggered a VSC, then a full safety car.
Unfortunately for Russell, his power unit died on lap 50, only six laps before the end of the race. He parked on the main straight and that was the end of his race. The only team the software bug didn’t touch still lost a car to its own hardware.
Verstappen came home for the win, making it his 72nd career win, all with Red Bull, tying Schumacher’s 72 wins with Ferrari for the most with a single team. It’s also his first win of the 2026 season — his last was Abu Dhabi in 2025. It’s been 3,291 days since he last won at this circuit in the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix. Nine years and three days, which breaks Mansell’s record of 2,325 days set between his Kyalami wins. It’s his eleventh consecutive season with a win, past Senna and Prost. It’s also Ford’s first F1 win since the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix. Twenty-three years later.
As for the standings, Antonelli still leads the drivers championship with 320 points, ahead of Russell (236) by 84 points. Hamilton 214, Leclerc 191, Norris and Verstappen tied on 188. For the constructors, Mercedes leads Ferrari with 556 points. Ferrari holds second with 405, McLaren third with 316, and Red Bull fourth with 298. There are 183 points still up for grabs in the drivers championship, and 316 for the constructors — seven races and one sprint. Russell winning every remaining race with Antonelli placing second in all of them still isn’t enough for him to win.
F1 built a new car for 2026 and a new rulebook to run it. On Sunday the cars were fine. It was the rulebook that wouldn’t move.