Max Verstappen had the pole, Lewis Hamilton had the seat beside him on the front row, and for several minutes at Sepang neither of them had a working racing car. The Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, run on Sunday after a tropical thunderstorm pushed the start back by around an hour, descended into farce on the wet formation laps when a software bug in the 2026 power units cut deployment on cars across seven teams — leaving the most expensive machinery in motorsport crawling, stalling and in Hamilton’s case switching off and restarting on track.
“It was like the LEGO race,” Hamilton said afterwards, picking up Verstappen’s line in the post-race news conference. Both were referring to the battery-powered Lego F1 cars that paraded before the British Grand Prix in July — a comparison that landed because the speeds genuinely were comparable.
A formation lap at walking pace
The sequence was almost comic. Verstappen, leading the field away behind the safety car to assess a saturated circuit, reported a lack of acceleration before his Red Bull cleared itself. Hamilton’s Ferrari then slowed to a crawl through the first formation lap as the rest of the field streamed past him. Liam Lawson, Gabriel Bortoleto and Valtteri Bottas suffered the same symptoms. Both Audis, both Haas cars, both Cadillacs, an Alpine, a Racing Bulls and Hamilton’s Ferrari were among those affected — eight or nine cars in total.
With the grid disintegrating and cars diverting into the pit lane, race control threw the red flag. Officials reverted to the original qualifying order for the restart, and the field waited while the FIA and the eleven teams worked through a fix.
Verstappen’s diagnosis was blunt. “That’s the problem that we have. These engines are so complicated and a lot of software is implemented,” he said. “When you go too low in speed and too low RPM, for whatever reason, then it just bogs down. And normally it takes one or two seconds and it comes back.” On this occasion it did not come back. “What can you say? I mean, that’s not what you want, right? For the sport.”
350kW, 250kW and a bug nobody had seen
The FIA’s explanation is specific and, in hindsight, predictable. Under the 2026 rules, electrical deployment is capped at 350kW, but in low-grip conditions that figure is cut to 250kW to help drivers manage torque delivery. On Sunday that reduced setting combined with very low engine speeds, almost stationary cars and the particular sector configuration at Sepang to trip failsafe modes in multiple power units. The engines simply could not deploy enough energy to get the cars moving again.
Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA’s single-seater director, was candid about why nobody had caught it. “We didn’t manage to test the software as extensively as we would have liked because there has been very little wet running this year,” he said. “On the formation lap, some cars went very slowly, and almost came to a standstill — that bug prevented the power unit to deploy for the cars to start again.”
The fix was a patch removing the energy limit constraints in the affected sectors, written, validated and distributed to all eleven teams in roughly 20 minutes. That is a remarkable turnaround for a mid-event software release across a grid of rival manufacturers. It is also an admission that Formula 1 ran 23 rounds of a new technical era without ever testing its cars properly in the rain.
A dominant win, and a warning for the rest of the era
Once running, the race belonged to Verstappen. He lost out to the Mercedes pair of Kimi Antonelli and George Russell at the standing start but came back to take his 72nd career grand prix win — his first of 2026, his first since the 2025 finale in Abu Dhabi, and the first for Red Bull’s in-house powertrain programme. Antonelli finished second to extend his championship lead to 84 points, Hamilton completed the podium, Charles Leclerc was fourth and Isack Hadjar fifth after dropping two places late on. Russell’s slim title hopes took another hit when he stopped behind the safety car in the closing stages.
The lasting significance is not the result but the precedent. This was the first genuinely wet session of the 2026 regulations, and it exposed an era in which the performance of a Formula 1 car is now gated by code written months earlier. Delayed starts are nothing new; a grid-wide software update as a condition of racing is. Verstappen has already called for the lesson to be learned, and with wet races in Brazil, Las Vegas and Qatar still possible before the season closes, the FIA and the manufacturers have limited time to prove the 250kW map behaves itself when the next downpour arrives.
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Sources: [Motorsport.com — Verstappen brands F1 power units “LEGO”](https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/max-verstappen-brands-f1-power-units-lego-after-bahrain-gp-glitch/10861963/) · [PlanetF1 — FIA explains software failure](https://www.planetf1.com/news/f1-bahrain-grand-prix-software-failure-fia-explains-cars-lost-power) · [Motorsport.com — Bahrain GP descends into chaos](https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/bahrain-f1-gp-descends-into-chaos-as-car-trouble-prompts-red-flag/10861801/) · [Sky Sports — Verstappen wins first race of 2026](https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/13594860/bahrain-gp-in-malaysia-max-verstappen-wins-first-race-of-2026-f1-season-in-wild-rain-hit-grand-prix-as-lewis-hamilton-surges-back) · [PlanetF1 — Race results](https://www.planetf1.com/news/f1-results-bahrain-grand-prix-malaysia-2026-race) · [GrandPrix247 — Hamilton and Verstappen on the Sepang software chaos](https://www.grandprix247.com/grand-prix-f1-weekend-news/lewis-hamilton-and-max-verstappen-agree-formula-1-software-chaos-was-like-lego-power-in-sepang)
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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