Rain completely rewrote the Bahrain Grand Prix at Sepang, overturning the expected tyre strategies and exposing Ferrari’s slow reaction during the opening phase. Max Verstappen won without ever using the hard tyre that had looked so important before the start, while Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc recovered to third and fourth after a race in which the raw numbers told a very different story from the final classification.
The Malaysian race became a sequence of changing conditions, Safety Cars, software problems and strategic resets. By the chequered flag, 19 cars were covered by only 29 seconds, but that compressed result concealed enormous swings in performance and track position across the 55 laps.
The hard tyre that never touched the track
After qualifying, Saturday at Sepang had revealed that Max Verstappen, like Charles Leclerc, would have only one hard tyre set available for the race. Red Bull had returned one set to Pirelli following FP2, meaning the Dutch driver reached Sunday with just one C2 remaining while almost everyone else had two.
That seemed like an important limitation before the race. In the end, the answer came in almost ironic fashion: the hard tyre remained under its cover until the chequered flag and Max Verstappen won without ever needing it.
Rain changed the entire strategic picture in the hour before the start. The wet circuit divided the grid between two opposite gambles, while one Safety Car later removed much of the reward for those who had taken risks and another erased in six laps the 11-second advantage the leader had built over approximately 30 laps.
The tyre sequences that ultimately shaped the race can be explored in the ScuderiaFans F1 Tyre & Stint Analysis.
Ninety-minute delay as Formula 1 cars lose power
The lights were originally supposed to go out at 15:00, but the start did not come until around 16:33, more than an hour and a half later. Rain had already pushed the formation lap back to 15:40, but the more serious problem appeared afterwards as the field attempted to reach the grid.
Several cars simply stopped. Lewis Hamilton, Esteban Ocon, Charles Leclerc and Valtteri Bottas were left stationary on the circuit, while even Max Verstappen reported a loss of power over the radio.
These were not individual mechanical failures or an extraordinary coincidence. The cars were being affected by a fault in the software controlling the delivery of the new power units, using the same standard code installed across all 22 cars.
The FIA suspended the starting procedure and ordered the field back into the pit lane. An update was then distributed directly on the grid, removing the energy-limitation constraint in the critical sectors. After approximately 20 minutes under the red flag, the race began from a standing start at 16:36:37.
FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis accepted the governing body’s responsibility: “It is clearly FIA software, we have a primary role and we need to do better.”
Sepang becomes seven races inside one Grand Prix
What followed can only really be understood by dividing the race into separate phases. There were two laps behind the Safety Car, six laps on a wet circuit that was gradually drying, and another neutralisation following Valtteri Bottas’ accident.
That was followed by around 30 laps of relatively uninterrupted racing, a Virtual Safety Car, another Safety Car and finally a four-lap sprint to the finish. Nine of the 55 laps were therefore not genuinely raced at normal speed, which is one reason the final gaps reveal considerably less than they might initially suggest.
Saturday had already decided who could improvise
Max Verstappen’s pole lap of 1:35.130 had been set with the track at 59 degrees Celsius. On Sunday, the asphalt temperature was only 33 degrees, a drop of 26 degrees that made direct comparisons between qualifying and the race extremely difficult.
The more important legacy of Saturday, however, was hidden inside the garages. In addition to Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc had only one hard tyre available for the start, and his remaining C2 had already been used during FP3.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Kimi Antonelli, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, George Russell and Isack Hadjar had no new soft tyres remaining. Nico Hülkenberg had three, giving the Audi driver the richest supply of new softs on the grid.
The available tyre allocations had effectively decided who could improvise before the Grand Prix even began.
Before the race, medium-hard-hard and soft-hard-hard appeared to be the two fastest strategic combinations, while a one-stop race looked unattractive because overtaking was relatively manageable. Drivers with only one C2 might even have needed to consider three stops. Ironically, the fastest theoretical strategies were unavailable to two of the drivers who had the pace to exploit them: Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.
None of those strategies was eventually used. Once wet-weather tyres appear in a race, the obligation to run two different slick compounds disappears. Max Verstappen therefore completed his opening stint on intermediates before running three separate stints on soft tyres, precisely the compound of which he had a strong supply.
Fifteen choose intermediates while seven remain on slicks
The standing start revealed three different approaches. Mercedes and Red Bull selected intermediates, Ferrari and Haas started on softs, while McLaren used mediums.
During the two laps behind the Safety Car, however, five drivers changed their minds and returned to the pits at enormous cost. Oscar Piastri spent 81.5 seconds in the pit lane, Gabriel Bortoleto almost 74 seconds and Nico Hülkenberg more than 61.
The final count showed 15 drivers using intermediates and seven who never fitted the green-marked compound. Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris, Fernando Alonso, Franco Colapinto, Pierre Gasly, Oliver Bearman and Valtteri Bottas remained entirely on slick tyres, and in the opening laps they paid an enormous price.
By lap three, Kimi Antonelli, George Russell and Max Verstappen occupied the leading positions, while Lewis Hamilton was only 15th and Charles Leclerc had fallen to the back of the field.
Lewis Hamilton loses 100 seconds before the race turns
Charles Leclerc reached the rear of the field after two problems in quick succession. First came contact with Nico Hülkenberg’s Audi at Turn 9, an incident that the stewards closed without further action. He then spent 38 seconds returning to the pits and switching onto intermediates.
Lewis Hamilton persisted with the original Ferrari choice and asked over the radio to see the team’s strategy through. By lap nine, however, the seven-time world champion was 100 seconds behind the leader.
As soon as the racing line began to dry, the equation changed quickly. Within six laps, lap times improved by approximately 25 seconds. Lewis Hamilton climbed to ninth by lap 16 and fifth by lap 22.
Valtteri Bottas was the one driver who never managed to recover. He remained around 10 seconds per lap slower than cars using the correct tyre and eventually ended his race in the barriers at Turn 14.
Lap nine Safety Car erases the strategic advantage
It was that accident that destroyed much of the reward for drivers who had taken the original strategic gamble. With the Safety Car deployed, 18 drivers pitted at roughly half the normal competitive cost.
The advantage accumulated by those who had stayed on slick tyres disappeared almost instantly. Lewis Hamilton still retained the benefit of having made one fewer stop than most of the field, but that was far less valuable than Ferrari’s original gamble had threatened to become once the track began drying.
One number mattered enormously at Sepang. Pirelli had estimated a pit-stop time loss of approximately 22.5 seconds, but the actual transit through the pit lane cost closer to 27.5 seconds. Five additional seconds per stop becomes 15 seconds across a three-stop strategy, a major discrepancy that pre-race simulations had not anticipated.
Kimi Antonelli recorded the quickest pit-lane transit at 27.141 seconds on lap 44. Max Verstappen remained between roughly 27.5 and 27.8 seconds across all three of his stops, neither gaining nor losing significant time.
Gabriel Bortoleto spent 51.7 seconds during his lap-34 visit, although that included a 10-second penalty for contact with Carlos Sainz. The Spanish driver himself lost almost 40 seconds during his lap-42 stop.
Sergio Pérez eventually accumulated seven stops and Gabriel Bortoleto five. Both surrendered more than a minute in total through the pit lane and neither was able to return to the group fighting for the important positions.
Ferrari race pace tells a very different story
Removing the neutralised laps leaves 44 genuinely competitive laps, and those provide a much better indication of true race performance. The median of the clean lap times put Max Verstappen at the top with a 1:41.163, while Kimi Antonelli was 0.328 seconds slower.
Immediately behind came a Ferrari far closer to the front than the race result alone suggested. Lewis Hamilton was 0.621 seconds from the benchmark and Charles Leclerc 0.629 seconds away, leaving just eight thousandths between the two SF-26 drivers despite their races unfolding in completely different ways.
The fourth place eventually secured by Charles Leclerc therefore matched his underlying pace remarkably well. George Russell, before retiring, was 0.819 seconds away and possessed the sixth-fastest race rhythm overall.
Ferrari’s underlying performance can also be compared directly with the rest of the field through the ScuderiaFans F1 Race Pace & Lap Time Comparison.
The internal team gaps offered another useful indication. Ferrari’s two drivers were separated by just eight thousandths per lap. McLaren’s gap was 0.123 seconds, Mercedes’ 0.491 and Red Bull’s 0.793, the largest among the leading teams. Max Verstappen and Kimi Antonelli therefore extracted significantly more from their cars than the drivers on the other side of their respective garages.
Just twelve hundredths per lap decide the victory
The clearest performance window came during the third stint, between laps 32 and 45. The track was dry, no flags interrupted the running and the drivers were using comparable used compounds for similar stint lengths.
In those conditions, Max Verstappen was losing only 0.051 seconds per lap in performance, compared with 0.171 for Kimi Antonelli on the same compound. The difference was just 0.12 seconds per lap.
That seems almost insignificant, but over 10 laps it produces more than one second of advantage without requiring an overtake or a dramatic pace increase. It explains why Max Verstappen’s margin grew with remarkable consistency: 1.2 seconds by lap 13, almost five seconds by lap 20 and 11.918 seconds by lap 42.
Energy deployment proves decisive at Sepang
The race speed figures might initially suggest that Red Bull was simply using a significantly different aerodynamic configuration. Saturday’s data, however, painted another picture.
Without slipstream and over a single qualifying lap, the first eight drivers were covered by less than 10 km/h in maximum speed, ranging from Kimi Antonelli at 306 km/h to Lewis Hamilton at 316 km/h, with Max Verstappen sitting approximately in the middle of the group.
The real difference was where electrical energy was deployed. On the main straight, Max Verstappen reached 324 km/h, the highest figure in the field. On the back straight he dropped to 306 km/h and could be passed by the McLarens.
Lewis Hamilton showed a similar trade-off. On his best lap, the Ferrari driver completed the same section at 301 km/h compared with around 310 km/h on earlier attempts, and that energy-management choice cost him part of the third sector.
With the 2026 Formula 1 power units, electrical energy must be spent where it provides the greatest benefit. At Sepang, Red Bull used that resource more effectively than anyone else.
Sector analysis reveals Ferrari’s strengths and weaknesses
The sector times were particularly revealing because combining each driver’s personal best sectors showed exactly where performance was being lost.
Max Verstappen left only 0.335 seconds on the table across the entire race, all of it in the opening sector. In sectors two and three, the Dutch driver produced the absolute benchmarks.
Lewis Hamilton showed almost the exact opposite pattern. His 24.992 was the fastest first sector of the race and no rival came particularly close, but he lost 0.418 seconds through sector two and almost half a second in sector three.
The Ferrari was therefore particularly effective in the sections dominated by braking and acceleration, while suffering more through the high-speed corners that form the heart of Sepang.
Charles Leclerc left 1.388 seconds spread across all three sectors, with the clearest deficit appearing between Turns 5 and 7. Isack Hadjar, by contrast, lost most of his time through the slower sections around Turn 1 and the Turn 14-15 complex.
The harshest verdict belonged to George Russell. The Mercedes driver left 2.7 seconds between his actual and ideal lap, with most of the deficit coming through sectors one and three despite no meaningful straight-line speed disadvantage. Mercedes had arrived on Saturday looking like a potential favourite but found itself chasing on Sunday, before the retirement completed an already difficult weekend.
Other teams exploit – or suffer from – the chaos
Behind the four leading teams, Aston Martin extracted one of the strongest results from the circumstances. Fernando Alonso finished eighth and Lance Stroll 12th after the team’s best qualifying performance of the season and its first 2026 appearance with both cars in Q2. Their underlying pace was approximately 1.9 seconds from the benchmark, meaning the team achieved more than its raw speed suggested.
Racing Bulls also maximised its opportunities. Liam Lawson finished seventh from 11th on the grid, while Arvid Lindblad recovered to tenth after starting last following a 30-place penalty. Seven points represented an excellent return from a race in which neither car possessed genuine front-running pace.
Alpine experienced contrasting fortunes. Franco Colapinto gained eight positions to finish 13th, while Pierre Gasly lost seven and the team scored no points. Audi had a similar split, with Nico Hülkenberg 11th and just outside the points while Gabriel Bortoleto lost eight positions including the effect of his penalty.
Haas recovered what it could after Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon had both been eliminated in Q1, with each gaining two places. Williams left empty-handed after Carlos Sainz lost four positions and Alexander Albon stopped on lap 42, triggering the second major neutralisation. Cadillac finished with only Sergio Pérez classified, the Mexican ending the race last among the finishers after seven pit stops.
Three moments reshape both the Bahrain GP and championship
The race changed direction three times, and on every occasion the decisive event was outside the drivers’ control. The lap-nine Safety Car caused by Valtteri Bottas effectively equalised the strategies.
On lap 42, Alexander Albon stopped on track, prompting Race Control first to deploy the Virtual Safety Car and then a full Safety Car. In only six laps, the 11-second lead Max Verstappen had built over approximately 30 laps disappeared.
George Russell then stopped on lap 49 while running third. The failure of the number 63 Mercedes power unit became a significant moment in the championship fight.
Mercedes had chosen not to replace the unit in Azerbaijan, hoping to reach Austin before introducing the new turbocharger. The gamble failed at an especially costly moment, leaving 15 points on the table for the driver attempting to chase his own team-mate in the title race.
At the lap-51 restart, the gaps had effectively vanished. Kimi Antonelli was only seven tenths behind the leader and Lewis Hamilton was less than two seconds away.
Four laps were enough for the competitive hierarchy to re-establish itself. Max Verstappen produced laps of 1:38.423, 1:38.529, 1:38.614 and finally 1:38.220, the fastest lap of the race, to win by 2.307 seconds.
Lewis Hamilton passed Isack Hadjar, while Charles Leclerc produced consecutive low-1:39 laps to recover the fourth position that his underlying performance had suggested was achievable from the beginning.
How the Bahrain GP changes the F1 standings
The result produced relatively little movement at the very top of the Drivers’ Championship but significant changes immediately behind. Kimi Antonelli moved to 320 points and extended his lead over George Russell to 84. The British driver remained on 236 points with seven races left and a maximum of 183 still available.
Lewis Hamilton climbed to 214 points, while Charles Leclerc moved ahead of Lando Norris into fourth with 191. Lando Norris remained level with Max Verstappen on 188 points but stayed ahead on countback through his number of victories. The latest championship picture can also be followed via the Formula 1 driver standings.
In the Constructors’ Championship, Mercedes remained well clear on 556 points. Ferrari collected 27 points to reach 405 and extend its advantage over McLaren, which remained on 316.
Red Bull recorded the biggest haul of the day with 35 points and moved to within 18 of the Woking team. A championship challenge may not be realistic, but securing the team’s first victory of the season represented an important step, while Max Verstappen could also take encouragement from the improving trend towards 2027.
For Ferrari, the clearest conclusion from Sepang was that the opening strategy and slow reaction to changing conditions cost heavily, but the underlying SF-26 performance was considerably stronger than the early race order suggested. With Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc separated by only eight thousandths in clean race pace, the Malaysian weekend delivered both a warning for the pit wall and an encouraging technical reference for the development of the Ferrari SF-26.
Further updates on the two Maranello drivers are available through the dedicated Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc sections, while the remaining races can be followed through the 2026 Formula 1 calendar.
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