Verstappen wins rain-affected Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia; Q&A on wet starts and engine future
Max Verstappen won his first race of the season at the rain-affected Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia on Sunday, with Kimi Antonelli second for Mercedes and Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton third. Antonelli extended his championship lead to 84 points after team-mate George Russell retired with an engine failure.
The race start in Malaysia was delayed because visibility at the original start time was judged too poor, and formation laps were aborted after a bug in wet-weather engine settings affected several cars, including those of Verstappen and Hamilton on the front row. A new piece of code was written and uploaded to teams before the race could proceed, and in the 25 minutes while that happened no further rain fell so the track was considerably drier when the event finally began. A safety car on lap nine preceded the switch from intermediate tyres to slicks by drivers who had started on treads, and there is now a collective agreement in F1 not to start races when drivers cannot see where they are going.
Hamilton has said that, had he started on intermediate tyres, he could have won the race, but there was no direct comparison of his pace with Verstappen's in equivalent conditions because Hamilton began on slicks while Verstappen initially ran intermediates. When Verstappen later changed to slicks, Hamilton's tyres were nine laps older; during the brief period Hamilton was in clear air before catching Isack Hadjar his pace was generally nowhere near Verstappen's, and after he finally passed Hadjar only three laps remained. On one lap Hamilton was within 0.1secs of Verstappen, on the other two he was 0.5secs and 1.2secs off.
Malaysia had been off the F1 calendar because its government was no longer willing to pay the rights fee, and it only returned after the Crown Prince of Bahrain pushed to stage his race and struck a deal with the Malaysian government that pleased F1. The event drew a record crowd of 261,000 this year, more than double the previous largest weekend attendance of 126,690, and organisers and F1 would entertain a permanent return only if a mutually acceptable agreement could be reached.
Red Bull's victory in Malaysia was also the team's first as a power-unit manufacturer after Red Bull Powertrains was created to build an engine under the 2026 regulations following Honda's official withdrawal from F1 at the end of 2021. On Ford's role in that programme, team principal Laurent Mekies said: "Ford has been with us on this project since pretty much the very beginning. They are a key strategic partner for us on these operations. They are helping us on a number of topics. Specifically, to give you a few examples, they are manufacturing some of the key elements of the engines. So, some of these key elements are manufactured in Milton Keynes (at the Red Bull campus), some of these key elements are manufactured at Ford. And they are a 200,000-people company. And therefore, also in terms of engineering, if and when we need specific support on some topics, we are able to get access to some very good specialists they have. Some of these specialists are actually with us in Milton Keynes, and they are able to help us on some specific topics. So it's a mix of manufacturing of key components and some very specific engineering support on some other topics."
Debate about the engine formula continues after Verstappen, Fernando Alonso and Lando Norris have voiced support for a return to naturally aspirated engines; FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has also pushed for naturally aspirated units, first V10s and more recently V8s, citing the sound and lighter cars. The trade-offs include higher fuel use that could make cars heavier for part of races, the FIA's exploration of refuelling options (which teams dislike), and statistics showing the 1994-2009 refuelling era produced the fewest on-track overtakes. George Russell described a contrasting example of flat-out racing in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, saying: "The final stint, I think, is the most amount of fun I've had in a race for as long as I can remember because the tyre felt great. We were pushing flat out every single lap. It was like qualifying one after another. You needed to be so alert around this circuit because the walls are so close, especially through the castle. You're threading the needle. Those final 10 laps felt really, really fun. And it almost felt like the stories I hear of the drivers in the early-mid 2000s, of when every lap was like a qualifying lap. The heart rate is higher, you're pushing the limit every single lap, there's no management. We've had a lot of conversations this year about power-unit energy management, but the tyre management is still there and it has been there for years and years (since Pirelli came in in 2011). But just with how the temperatures and the circuit fell out today, with the tyres there was no management, and that was exceptionally fun."
Other considerations cited include environmental optics with a net-zero carbon target by 2030, potential noise issues affecting urban events such as Miami and Las Vegas, and road-relevance for manufacturers whose road cars are largely turbocharged and hybridised. The current direction under discussion is a new engine formula for either 2030 or 2031 featuring V8 turbos with roughly 15-25% electrical power, principally to be used as a push-to-pass system, with organisers seeking to avoid the energy-starvation problems seen under recent rules and to allow drivers to run at maximum power more consistently.
This weekend Formula 1 moves on to the Singapore Grand Prix at Marina Bay, the sport's original night race.