13 min read
The Bahrain Grand Prix started 1 hour and 33 minutes after its scheduled time, on a drying track that turned every tyre choice into a guess. Max Verstappen made two of them and got both right. He took the lead on lap 13, won by 2.307, and the championship lead went back out to 84.
Verstappen took pole on a 1:35.130, with Hamilton second on a 1:35.428. The margin was 0.298. It was Verstappen's first pole of 2026 and Red Bull's first since Abu Dhabi in 2025. Verstappen was 0.138 quicker in sector one and Hamilton 0.304 quicker in sector two, so after two sectors the Ferrari was 0.166 up. Verstappen was 0.464 quicker in sector three, more than the whole margin on its own.
Hamilton's lap was built in the corners and lost on the straights. Nothing on Saturday could say which of those a full race distance at Sepang would reward more.
The grid did not match the session. Hadjar qualified third on a 1:35.558 and took a 5-place penalty for a seventh internal combustion engine, which put him eighth and moved everyone from fourth to eighth up a place. Lindblad started from the back for exceeding his power-unit allocation, and Colapinto dropped 15 places for the Baku collision and a fifth engine. The front 8 read Verstappen, Hamilton, Antonelli, Leclerc, Norris, Piastri, Russell, Hadjar.
Antonelli came to Sepang leading the championship by 66 points over Russell. Before Baku it had been 81, and Russell took 15 of it back there with the pole, the win and the fastest lap. Mercedes led the constructors' standings on 538 to Ferrari's 378.
Sepang measures 5,543 metres and has 15 corners. Its long, sweeping turns put some of the highest sideways loads on the tyres of any circuit on the calendar, and the last hairpin sits between two straights, the back one 927 metres long. Formula 1 had not raced here since 2017, and the asphalt has not been resurfaced since. Pirelli called it particularly abrasive and left out the hardest compound, bringing C2, C3 and C4 to narrow the gap between a one-stop and a two-stop.
The venue's documented character is a tropical monsoon zone, where sudden, heavy afternoon downpours were a recurring feature of its 18 editions between 1999 and 2017. That is the one thing about Sepang nobody needed to verify. The rain came before the start. It pushed Saturday's question about corners and straights into second place behind a simpler one. Which tyre do you start a drying race on?
Race control declared a delayed start 17 minutes before the lights were due. It then set the formation lap 40 minutes late and sent it out behind the safety car. The formation laps had barely begun when the starting procedure was suspended and the track went red.
Verstappen and Hamilton both reported no throttle on that formation lap, and Hamilton stopped on the straight. Hadjar went through the gravel at Turn 2. The FIA later said the fault lay in its own systems. An "unprecedented combination of low engine speed, low-grip conditions, wet-weather energy management settings and the Sepang circuit's sector configuration" had cut the power, and it sent every team a software update to lift the energy limit in the affected sectors before the restart. Race control set the start order back to the original grid, so the front row stayed as it had qualified. The red flag stood for 20 minutes. The race finally began behind the safety car 48 minutes after the suspension and 1 hour and 33 minutes after the scheduled start, and the standing start came a lap later. The laps behind the safety car came out of the distance, and the race ran 55 laps, not 56.
The field went to the grid split 9, 9 and 4. Red Bull, Mercedes and 5 others started on intermediates. Ferrari and 7 others started on softs. McLaren and Aston Martin started on mediums. Then most of the field changed its mind. Piastri, Stroll, Hülkenberg, Bortoleto and Pérez came in for intermediates around the standing start, and by lap 3, 14 of the 22 were on them. Both Ferraris and Norris were among the 8 who stayed on dry tyres. Across the whole afternoon, 6 cars never fitted an intermediate at all, and Hamilton and Norris were two of them.
The intermediate was the slower tyre for a track that was going to dry. It was the only tyre that worked on the track as it was when the lights went out.
Mercedes went 1-2 into Turn 1 at the standing start, Antonelli from third and Russell from seventh, and the pole-sitter was third behind them. At the end of lap 3 the order read Antonelli, Russell, Verstappen, Lawson, Hadjar, every one of them on intermediates. Piastri was tenth. Hamilton was fifteenth from second on the grid, and seventeenth a lap later. Leclerc came in for intermediates and was last, twenty-second, from fourth. Both Ferraris were out of the points before the race was 4 laps old.
The lap times show the track changing underneath them. On lap 3 Hamilton's softs were 30.074 slower than Antonelli's intermediates. On lap 5 the difference was 14.495, and on lap 8 it was 0.253. Norris, on mediums, was 0.567 quicker than the leader on lap 8. Antonelli's own laps were heading the other way, from a 1:48.702 on lap 4 to a 1:52.884 on lap 7, as the track dried under a tyre built for water.
Verstappen took second from Russell on lap 6 and closed on the leader, from 2.258 behind on lap 3 to 0.078 on lap 8. On lap 7 race control noted contact between Leclerc and Hülkenberg at Turn 9, and the stewards took it no further. Bottas spun off and was out, his race 7 laps long.
Laps 1 and 2 are left out. Both ran behind the safety car with cars pitting for intermediates, and their timing order carries no meaning. The shaded band is the first safety car, laps 9 to 12.
The safety car came out on lap 9, with a recovery vehicle going to Turn 14 for Bottas. Every car at the front on intermediates came in for slicks. Verstappen took a new soft. Antonelli and Russell took new mediums. Hadjar took a used soft. Leclerc, 5 laps into his intermediates, went back to softs. Hamilton did not stop at all.
The case for stopping was already in the lap times. Between lap 4 and lap 8, Antonelli's lap time on intermediates got 3.921 slower and Verstappen's 2.857 slower, while Hamilton's on softs got 20.198 quicker. The safety car made the switch cheap, and every frontrunner on intermediates took it.
Antonelli kept the lead through the stops. The safety car came in at the end of lap 12. On lap 13 Verstappen took the lead at Turn 1, round the outside, completing the move at Turn 2, and Russell took second off his team mate at Turn 5 in the same sequence. Verstappen's restart lap on new softs was a 1:44.849. Antonelli's on new mediums was a 1:46.383, 1.534 slower. At the end of lap 13 Verstappen led by 0.862. Antonelli did not get back to second until lap 21.
From that restart to the flag, Verstappen led every lap but one. The exception was lap 44, when Antonelli led while Verstappen made his stop under the virtual safety car.
Start on the wet tyre. Get off it the moment the lap times say so. Then win the restart.
From lap 13 the lead grew on 25 of the next 29 laps. It read 0.862 on lap 13, 4.257 on lap 20, 9.488 on lap 30, 10.613 on lap 33 and 11.989 on lap 42. The 4 laps it fell were 35 and 37 to 39, and it never fell by more than 0.550. Red Bull were quickest of the 11 teams on the median green lap at a 1:41.692, and quickest in both sector two and sector three. Mercedes were quickest in sector one and 0.172 off on the lap.
Behind that, Hamilton was climbing. He was seventeenth on lap 4 and never pitted under the safety car. He was twelfth by lap 13, ninth by lap 18, sixth by lap 21 and fifth by lap 22, on the set of softs he had taken to the grid. He kept them for 31 laps. Leclerc came from fifteenth on lap 13 to sixth by lap 35, through 3 tyre changes.
Those softs are why the climb kept going. From lap 17 the lap times of the cars ahead began to rise. Between lap 17 and lap 30 Verstappen's got 0.977 slower, Antonelli's 1.047 slower and Hadjar's 1.383 slower. Hamilton's got 0.280 quicker, on a soft that was 30 laps old by the end of it, on asphalt Pirelli had called particularly abrasive. Ferrari got the first decision wrong on both cars. Hamilton made the second decision himself, by refusing to stop.
Ahead of him was Hadjar, who had qualified third, started eighth after his engine penalty and was fourth by lap 6. The gap read 11.842 at the end of lap 20 and peaked at 11.926 on lap 21. Then it came down. 11.278 on lap 24, 9.565 on lap 26, 7.744 on lap 28, 5.190 on lap 30, 3.543 on lap 31. That is 7.7 seconds in 7 laps from lap 24, a little over a second a lap, on a soft 30 laps old.
The break is laps 32 and 33, the stop and the out-lap for both cars. From lap 34 Hamilton never got further away than 1.326 and never got past.
Both cars came in on lap 32, Hamilton off the softs and onto used mediums, Hadjar onto used softs. The order did not change. From lap 34 to lap 42 Hamilton sat between 0.537 and 1.326 behind, inside a second on laps 34, 38, 39, 41 and 42. For 9 laps he had the pace of the car in front and not the pass.
Hamilton started on the wrong tyre and kept it for 31 laps. By the time he gave it up, it was the right one.
A virtual safety car went out on lap 43, with Albon stopped on track. Verstappen pitted on the first lap of it and rejoined second. Antonelli led lap 44 and then pitted, and Hamilton came in on the same lap. Russell and Hadjar stopped on lap 45, and Hadjar came out still ahead of Hamilton. Five minutes after the virtual safety car began, it became a full one, with a recovery vehicle going to Turn 2.
The stops changed nobody's place in the top 8. On lap 42 the order read Verstappen, Antonelli, Russell, Hadjar, Hamilton, Leclerc, Piastri, Norris, and once the stops were done it read the same. What the safety car took away was the distance between them. Verstappen's 11.989 was gone.
Russell was third at the end of every lap from 44 to 49. On lap 50, behind the safety car, he stopped on the start and finish straight before Turn 1, 5 laps after his pit stop.
Mercedes confirmed a power unit failure. Toto Wolff said: "It is a PU failure, wasn't caused by the Safety Car, we haven't assessed it yet." Russell said there had been no warning, only "a sudden failure." It was his third non-finish of 2026.
Third place is 15 points, and Antonelli finished second for 18. With Russell third, the afternoon would have moved the championship by 3 points. Without him, it moved by 18.
The race went green during lap 51, with 4 laps of racing left and the lead at 0.804. It grew on all 4. 0.970, 1.307, 1.597, 2.307. Verstappen had already built this lead once, from 0.862 on lap 13 to 11.989 on lap 42. The second time he had 4 laps, and they included the 3 fastest laps of the race. A 1:38.423 on lap 52, a 1:38.529 on lap 53, and a 1:38.220 on the last.
Four cars inside 3 seconds of the lead on lap 51. By the flag the same four were spread across 7.258, and two of them had changed places with the third.
Behind him, Hadjar lost two places in two laps. Hamilton passed him into Turn 1 for third on lap 53, and Leclerc passed him for fourth on lap 54. Hadjar was 1.916 slower than Hamilton on lap 53 and 1.817 slower on lap 54, and afterwards he gave the reason himself. "I had no battery, something like that. So there was no contest against the Ferraris in the straight."
It is not a grand slam. Verstappen had the pole, the win and the fastest lap, but Antonelli led from the standing start to lap 12 and again on lap 44. The laps led read Verstappen 43 and Antonelli 12.
Saturday's question was whether a lap built in the corners would hold up over a race distance. The rain made Sepang answer a different one first. Hamilton finished third from seventeenth, 4.919 behind, having spent 31 of the 55 laps on a tyre he fitted before the start.
Verstappen. First win of 2026, and Red Bull's, at the sixteenth attempt of a season that had produced neither. It is also the first win for the power unit Red Bull build themselves, with Ford. He was the quickest car on the road, with a race-pace median of 1:41.299 against Antonelli's 1:41.592, and Red Bull were quickest of all 11 teams on the median lap. The last time Formula 1 raced at Sepang, in 2017, he won that too. He is sixth in the championship on 188, 132 behind Antonelli with 183 points left.
Antonelli. Second, 18 points, and a championship lead back out to 84 from 66. He led 12 laps and lost the lead at the lap-13 restart, on mediums against Verstappen's softs. He was second on race pace, 0.293 a lap off Verstappen, and 2.307 behind at the flag. His own driving gained him 3 points on Russell. Russell's stop gave him the other 15. What he needs from the last 7 rounds is no longer to win them.
Russell. Seventh on the grid, second by lap 13, third from lap 21 to lap 49, and out on lap 50 with a power unit failure. No points, 8 days after he took 25 of them. He is 84 behind, having been 66 behind on Saturday night. To take the title he now needs 85 more points than Antonelli from 7 races and a sprint, which means needing Antonelli to have afternoons like this one. Asked whether the fight was over, he said: "Yeah, I'd say so."
Hamilton. Second on the grid, seventeenth on lap 4, third at the flag, and never once on an intermediate. The start on softs was the team's call. Staying out at the safety car was his. "Let's just wait it out for the track to dry." He is third in the championship on 214, 22 behind Russell, and said he had come into Sunday expecting "at least a good battle with Max." He thinks Singapore might give him one.
Leclerc. Fourth, from twenty-second on lap 4 and twelfth at a third distance. The grid-to-finish ledger records him as fourth from fourth, net zero, which is the most misleading line on the sheet. Between them the two Ferraris were the third- and fourth-quickest cars on race pace, behind only the winner and the championship leader. Ferrari's 27 points are their largest haul since the Dutch Grand Prix. The pace was there. The starting tyre was not.
Hadjar. Third in qualifying, eighth on the grid after his engine penalty, third again with 4 laps of racing left, and fifth at the flag. Two places and 5 points, from 15 to 10. His 10 were part of the 35 that took Red Bull to within 18 of McLaren for third in the constructors' standings.
McLaren. Sixth and ninth, 10 points, and the only one of the top four teams more than a second off the median lap. Their 1:43.079 is 1.387 behind Red Bull's, against Mercedes' 0.172 and Ferrari's 0.204. Piastri was the only McLaren to fit the intermediate before the standing start, and he finished 3 places and 6 points ahead of the team mate who did not. Norris nearly ran into Piastri behind the safety car when the queue slowed for Russell, went through the gravel at Turn 1, and was reprimanded for it. He finished ninth from fifth on the grid. McLaren lead Red Bull by 18 for third in the constructors' standings, down from 43 after Baku.
Bortoleto took 10 seconds for the Turn 2 collision with Sainz on lap 14 and served it on lap 39. Alonso's false start was reviewed and taken no further. After the race the stewards cleared Albon, who had slowed in front of Piastri at the pit entry to keep to the safety-car delta time. Hülkenberg's unsafe release was still to be decided.
The constructors' table reads Mercedes 556, Ferrari 405, McLaren 316, Red Bull 298. In the drivers' championship Antonelli has 320 to Russell's 236, with 7 races and the Singapore sprint left and 183 points available. If Antonelli finishes second in all 7 and second in the sprint he reaches 453. If Russell wins all of them he reaches 419. Second place everywhere is enough by 34. After Baku it was enough by 9. Hamilton reaches 397 at best, Leclerc 374, Norris and Verstappen 371. All four are still alive on paper and none of them can afford a single afternoon like Russell's.
Max Verstappen. Qualifying. Bahrain Grand Prix. Purple at the start of the lap and purple at the end of it, and sixth through everything in between.
Series III · The Data RemembersThe pole margin was 0.298 and the final sector was worth 0.464 of it. Hamilton had the apex of 7 of the 8 braking corners and the slowest back straight of the ten.
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