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Max Verstappen ended a 16-race wait for pole position on Saturday at Sepang, lapping the Bahrain Grand Prix’s borrowed Malaysian home in 1:35.130 to beat Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari by 0.298 seconds and claim Red Bull’s first pole of the 2026 season.
It was the clearest evidence yet that the upgrade package Red Bull have been feeding onto the RB22 since the summer has transformed a car that began the year nowhere near the front. A week after finishing less than 0.2 seconds short of victory in Baku, Verstappen topped every segment of qualifying and produced two laps quick enough for pole.
“It’s fantastic. We have been trying many Grands Prix to get pole,” he said. “Sometimes a bit closer than others, but to finally get it, from where we started the season, pretty incredible.”
A new floor rewrites Red Bull’s season
The centrepiece of the upgrade is a new floor, and Sepang — 5.543km of long, loaded corners over an abrasive, broken surface — was the circuit most likely to expose whether it worked. It did.
“We have been adding bits to the car and they have worked,” Verstappen said. “When they work, you gain lap time, you have a better overall balance in the car.”
Isack Hadjar offered the most useful reference point of all. The 21-year-old rookie, Verstappen’s team-mate since replacing Yuki Tsunoda for 2026, has watched the car change underneath him: “I jumped in a car that’s way better than when I left it in Budapest.”
Hadjar backed that up by equalling his best qualifying result in third, having finished in the top three in all three practice sessions. He will start eighth after a five-place grid penalty for taking a new internal combustion engine — a reminder that Red Bull’s step forward this year has come alongside the considerable risk of building their own power unit in partnership with Ford under the new regulations.
The grid behind the front row read Antonelli fourth, Leclerc fifth, Norris sixth, Piastri seventh and Russell eighth, with the top eight separated by 0.741s.
Hamilton’s best lap — and his warning
Hamilton’s second place is his first front-row start since Hungary in July, and he rated the lap that produced it above anything else he has managed in a difficult second season at Ferrari.
“That was one of my most enjoyable laps of the year, I have to say. I think it was probably my best lap of the year,” he said, describing the search for a Sepang set-up as “like balancing a knife on its head, which is pretty much impossible.”
He was less optimistic about converting it. Ferrari carry a straight-line speed deficit, and Hamilton watched Verstappen’s Friday long runs closely enough to temper his own expectations.
“Max was really quick on his long runs, so I’ll just try my best to hold onto him tomorrow,” he said. “I think he’s got the pace generally to pull away, but if that’s different when we start the race and we’re able to hold on and we’re in the fight, that would be awesome.”
Heat, tyre hell and a title race already decided elsewhere
Formula 1 has not raced at Sepang since 2017, the circuit dropped over an annual hosting fee of around $73m. It returned only because the 2026 Iran war forced the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian rounds; F1 confirmed the relocation on 26 July, with Bahrain retaining the race name, ticketing rights and proceeds.
The 56-lap race starts at 15:00 local time in conditions nobody on the grid has current data for. Antonelli, who leads the championship in his first full season, summed up Sunday’s variables bluntly: “Tomorrow might be two stops, three stops… the only thing we know is that it’s going to be roasting hot out there.”
That matters most to Mercedes, who brought a significant upgrade of their own and cannot find its window. Russell, eighth, was scathing about the toll Sepang is taking on his tyres.
- “It’s a very demanding circuit on the tyres, the tarmac is all broke up, it’s extremely rough, it’s so hot out there and the tyres are going through hell,” he said. “For whatever reason, it seems to be affecting us far more than others.”
- Antonelli compounded his own Saturday with a Q2 track-limits violation that cost him a set of tyres, leaving one for his final Q3 run.
The irony is that Red Bull’s revival has arrived far too late to matter for the title. Antonelli leads on 302 points from Russell on 236 and Hamilton on 199; Verstappen is sixth on 163, 139 adrift with eight rounds left. Mercedes hold a commanding constructors’ lead on 538 points.
What Sunday can settle is a different question: whether the RB22, at last, is the fastest car in Formula 1 — and what that means for 2027.
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**Word count:** ~780 words (article body text).
A note on the brief: the summary line calls it “Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix,” but qualifying has already run (Verstappen pole, Hamilton second), so I wrote it as a post-qualifying race preview rather than a Friday practice piece. The “Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia” framing is correct — the race was relocated to Sepang after the 2026 Iran war forced the Bahrain and Saudi rounds off the calendar.
Sources: [Sky Sports qualifying report](https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/13594547/bahrain-gp-in-malaysia-max-verstappen-beats-lewis-hamilton-to-pole-position-to-claim-first-red-bull-pole-of-2026-formula-1-season), [Motorsport.com — Hamilton “best lap”](https://au.motorsport.com/f1/news/lewis-hamilton-labels-sepang-qualifying-as-best-lap-of-his-2026-f1-season-/10861540/), [Motorsport Week](https://www.motorsportweek.com/2026/10/03/max-verstappen-red-bull-sepang-pole-position/), [Yahoo Sports/BBC syndication](https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/incredible-red-bull-upgrade-enlivens-122601391.html), [PlanetF1 qualifying results](https://www.planetf1.com/news/bahrain-grand-prix-malaysia-2026-qualifying-f1-results).
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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