Round 16 of the 2026 season, the Bahrain Grand Prix hosted in Malaysia at Sepang, was always going to be unusual. Nobody expected it to be this unusual. A formation lap that collapsed before the race could start, a tyre split between intermediate and dry that defined everyone’s afternoon, two safety cars, a title contender’s engine blowing up in the final stint and a Lewis Hamilton recovery that put the P12 start in the shade: this was the race that had everything.
Formation lap chaos
The grid was supposed to roll off behind the safety car for multiple formation laps on damp Sepang asphalt. It never got that far. Halfway around the first formation lap, a wave of cars reported a severe electronic throttle problem. Max Verstappen on team radio: “I can’t accelerate. It’s not working guys.” Lewis Hamilton came to a complete standstill: “I’m just pressing the throttle, nothing’s happening.” Race control suspended the start procedure and instructed drivers to power the cars off, wait five seconds and reboot the system to clear the throttle response error. The grid eventually got rolling again, but the race began with half the field unsure the car underneath them would do what they asked next.
The tyre split
When the lights finally went out, the strategy call was the first story. A big group gambled on dry tyres while the rest went intermediate: Hamilton on softs, Lando Norris on mediums, while Verstappen, Kimi Antonelli, George Russell and most of the rest stayed on inters. The track was too wet for slicks. Hamilton lost twelve seconds to the leaders in the middle sector of lap one alone and was more than forty-seven seconds off the lead inside the first handful of laps.
Up at the sharp end, Antonelli nailed the launch to grab the lead off the line, bringing Russell with him for a Mercedes one-two in the opening phase. Verstappen slipped to third from the start. Behind them Liam Lawson produced the move of the opening lap, gaining seven positions to end up fourth. Isack Hadjar was equally sharp, picking Lawson off into the hairpin with a late-braking move to take fourth into the first stint proper.
Safety car one: Bottas off, Verstappen pounces
The dry-tyre gamble bit when Valtteri Bottas lost the back of the Cadillac on slicks and slid into the gravel, triggering the first full safety car. Mercedes double-stacked Antonelli and Russell in the pits. Red Bull reacted hard, pitting Verstappen on the same lap to keep him close enough to attack when the race went green again. On the restart Verstappen launched at Antonelli through the long right-left sequence and swept around the outside into the lead. It was the overtake of the race. Antonelli then had to defend hard from his own teammate, Russell trying to go all the way around the outside for second before Antonelli reclaimed the position.
Dry line, wet-weather drivers
As the track dried, the field spread into battles up and down the order. Gabriel Bortoleto made contact with Carlos Sainz and picked up a ten-second penalty for the collision. Hamilton, down near a minute and running on freshly bolted dry tyres that were now the right tyre for the conditions, started the recovery that defined his afternoon: a one-man highlight reel of late-braking moves that got him past Oscar Piastri and up through the midfield. Lawson and Piastri went wheel-to-wheel for sixth and seventh, swapping positions through more than one corner. Fernando Alonso came out of the pack with a classic Alonso dive down the inside of turn ten past Sainz to force his way into the points.
Safety car two: Russell, Norris and Hadjar heartbreak
Alex Albon stopped on circuit with a gearbox failure. Out came the second safety car and the race compressed for a late shootout. Within that compressed window three major stories unfolded. Russell, running a comfortable third behind Verstappen and Antonelli, lost the power unit. His radio told the story: “PU hot… PU’s broken.” He pulled off and his afternoon was over. Norris lost focus as the cars backed up under the safety car and ran straight into the gravel trap, dropping him out of the podium conversation and into recovery mode. Hadjar, who was in podium position for Red Bull’s junior team, suffered a hybrid battery failure in the closing laps and became a sitting duck down the long straights. He kept the car on the road but could not defend.
Verstappen seals the first Red Bull Powertrains win
Verstappen nailed the second restart as cleanly as he had the first. He crossed the line to take his first win of 2026 and, more significantly, the first ever race victory for the new Red Bull Powertrains engine in its debut season. In parc fermé Verstappen was openly emotional. On the podium radio he said: “Very special within the team where we started the season. Probably a lot of people not believing in another win this year, including myself at times. But my team kept pushing. It’s really emotional to win with our own engine for the first time in our first year.”
Antonelli held on for second and will take the eighteen points as a serious result given how the day broke. Hamilton completed one of the great recovery drives of the season to come home third, up from the back of the top half after the slick-tyre gamble and the formation lap chaos.
Final race result
- P1: Max Verstappen (Red Bull). first win of 2026, first Red Bull Powertrains victory.
- P2: Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes). eighteen championship points.
- P3: Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari). recovery from P12 and roughly a minute down.
- P4: Charles Leclerc (Ferrari). early puncture plus front-wing damage, salvaged.
- P5: Isack Hadjar (Red Bull). battery failure before the flag, held on.
- P6: Oscar Piastri (McLaren). defensive drive in a chaotic afternoon.
- P7: Liam Lawson (RB). season-best finish.
- P8: Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin). mastered the wet-to-dry transition.
- P9: Lando Norris (McLaren). recovery after the wrong tyre call and the gravel excursion.
- P10: Arvid Lindblad (RB). points finish from last on the grid.
What the drivers said
Antonelli on second: “P2 was the maximum we could have achieved today. After the start I thought we had a chance to win, but after the restart Max overtook me. I’m happy with the points for the championship.”
Hamilton on third from P12: “Bittersweet. It was so easy to crash on those slick tyres early on. I didn’t think I’d be able to get back to third place, so I’m very, very grateful for that.”
Leclerc on fourth: “Everything that could go wrong in the first part went wrong: puncture, broken front wing. Everything that could go right in the second part went right. P4 is a good result considering.”
Norris on ninth: “Starting on the medium was the wrong decision. The inter tyre on the laps to grid was a bit deceiving. We wanted to take the gamble, but it didn’t pay off.”
Bortoleto on the Sainz collision: “I want to apologise to Carlos. I ended up touching him and destroyed his race a bit and mine as well.”
What it means for the championship
Antonelli still leads the drivers’ standings. Russell’s power unit failure costs him real points in the second half of the title fight. Verstappen’s first win of the season reminds everyone the Red Bull Powertrains car is now at the sharp end on the right day. Hamilton’s P3 recovery is the Ferrari story of the weekend. The championship arithmetic will tighten before next weekend’s round. The next race is Singapore on 11 October.
