F1 start suffers bizarre failure in Malaysia rain

SEPANG – The Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia got off to a bizarre start as wet weather appeared to play havoc during a pair of delayed formation laps.

F1’s first wet-weather experience of the 2026 season got off to a nightmare start with cars stopping on track even before the race began.

Chaos in Bahrain GP in Malaysia formation lap

As thunderstorms broke in Sepang roughly 45 minutes before the planned race start time, it quickly became evident that the start would be suspended.

This proved to be the case, with the start eventually delayed by 40 minutes.

But when the drivers left the grid, there was near-instant drama, as Isack Hadjar went off the track at Turn 3 from eighth place.

As he recovered, power unit problems began to strike those still circulating, with teammate Max Verstappen the first driver to lose any ability to accelerate.

Having got going again, second-placed Lewis Hamilton then lost power, and was overtaken by the majority of the field.

Charles Leclerc, both Cadillac drivers, and both Audi drivers were also among those to suffer similar woes.

It created a bizarre scenario where some of the field was caught almost a lap behind the Safety Car when officials elected to throw the red flag.

What went wrong in failed Sepang start?

Speaking on Sky Sports F1, Anthony Davidson explained how the wet weather and reduced speeds caused havoc with the engine mapping, which caused the bizarre scenes in Malaysia.

“It’s not just the Ferrari power units that would be susceptible to that property, but it’s a lot of it comes down to the homework that has been done or should have been done before these wet conditions, and a lot of that can be simulated,” said Davidson.

“Basically, what’s going on there is if you run these engines too slowly, the turbo spools down because we don’t have the motor generating unit heat anymore.

“The MGUH, as we had last season, would help to keep the turbo spooled. Well, we don’t have that anymore. So, what’s effectively happening is if you’re off throttle for too long on idle, then the turbo spools down, and when the driver puts their foot back down, it uses all of the battery juice to fill in the torque demand from the driver’s right foot.

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“As soon as the battery goes flat, you’re down to just ICE, internal combustion engine power only, because you’ve got no battery anymore.

“That’s gone, and then because it can’t reach the driver’s torque demand anymore because the engine’s not creating the power because you’ve got no turbo because that’s fully spooled down.

“Then you go outside of the FIA regulation. It’s all there to stop teams having traction control.

“Basically, it’s incredibly complicated, and you fall into this horrible trap where the engine can’t reaccelerate because you’re being penalised by this regulation, basically. It’s all in an attempt to stop traction control being used.”

He added: “So if you keep the RPM up, the revs per minute, it keeps the turbo spooled, as anyone would know from an old-school 1980s turbo engine.

“You get horrible turbo lag, and that’s exactly what these engines suffer with as well.

“But luckily, we have the battery under normal running conditions in the dry to fill in the torque hole of minor turbo despooling, which isn’t usually too much of a pain in the dry.

“But in the wet weather, obviously you’re much longer off the throttle, particularly on a very, very slow creeping around a safety car lap, so that’s where they run into problems.”

As a result of the problems, Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord confirmed that the FIA has sent software updates to the teams.

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