Bahrain GP in Malaysia 2026: Verstappen wins in the rain as Russell's late failure leaves Antonelli 84 points clear

Max Verstappen won the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia on Sunday, converting pole position into Red Bull's first victory of the 2026 season and the first for the team's own power unit 1. Kimi Antonelli finished 2.307 seconds behind, and Lewis Hamilton fought back from a minute down to take third 2.

Weather and the title fight shaped the afternoon at Sepang. A thunderstorm soaked the circuit an hour before the start, the first attempt to begin the race was abandoned when a software fault cut power to a string of cars, and the restarted race ran through two Safety Cars 13.

George Russell, running third, stopped with an apparent power unit failure five laps from the end. That retirement and Antonelli's second place lifted Antonelli's championship lead from 66 points to 84 with seven rounds left 4. Red Bull's win and Isack Hadjar's fifth place brought the team to within 18 points of McLaren in the constructors' championship 5.

Verstappen completed the 55 laps in 1:47:14.808, with Antonelli 2.307 seconds back and Hamilton 4.919 seconds behind the winner 2. Hadjar had held third until the four-lap sprint after the final Safety Car, when both Ferraris passed him 16.

Bortoleto's 18th place reflects a 10-second time penalty for the collision with Sainz 26. Russell was classified 20th despite retiring on lap 49, while Alex Albon and Valtteri Bottas were not classified, stopping on laps 41 and 7 2.

Verstappen took Red Bull's first pole of the season with a 1:35.130, 0.298 seconds clear of Hamilton 7. Hadjar set the third-fastest time but carried a five-place penalty for using extra power unit elements, which moved Antonelli up to third on the grid and Leclerc to fourth 18.

Mercedes left qualifying with less than its practice pace promised. Antonelli was limited to a single run in Q3 and lined up fourth, with Russell eighth, and The Race counted the session among the weekend's disappointments for the team 6.

The penalties reshuffled the back of the grid. Colapinto carried a five-place penalty for causing the collision in Azerbaijan plus 10 places for new power unit elements, and Lindblad took a 30-place demotion for the same reason 8. That sent both drivers to the final row, behind Cadillac pair Bottas and Perez 8.

Rain arrived about an hour before the scheduled 15:00 local start, and Race Control delayed the race while the medical car checked the track and reported a significant amount of standing water 1. The formation lap eventually began at 15:40, 40 minutes late, behind the Safety Car 1.

Trouble started within seconds. Hadjar ran through the gravel at Turn 2, Verstappen reported that he could not accelerate, and Hamilton stopped on the start/finish straight and had to restart his car 19. "My engine just completely died," Verstappen said of his own start problem, and with cars crawling at walking pace, Race Control suspended the procedure and red-flagged the race 9.

The cause was a fault in the standard power unit software. The 2026 cars run a wet-weather mode capped at 250kW of deployment, with the MGU-K cut in certain sectors including Turn 9 at Sepang. As the cars slowed to a crawl, boost pressure fell and there was no electric power to rescue them, and a bug put the power units into a 60-second emergency shutdown that also killed combustion power 3.

The FIA wrote and distributed updated software to every team during the delay, and the second standing start went ahead at 16:33 local from the original grid order 13. FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis said the problem had escaped testing because the 2026 cars had done almost no wet running: "We didn't manage to test the software as extensively as we would have liked, because there's been very little wet running this year" 3.

The standing start reshuffled the order in the wet. Antonelli and Russell swept past Verstappen to run first and second for Mercedes, and Lawson climbed to third in the Racing Bulls and traded places with Verstappen 1. Hamilton and Leclerc slid down the order on soft tyres; Leclerc switched to intermediates within a lap, while Hamilton stayed out on his original set 1.

Verstappen worked his way back. He passed Russell into Turn 4, Hadjar cleared Lawson for fourth, and by the end of lap eight the gap to Antonelli was closing 1. Antonelli then ran wide at the final corner, and as Verstappen closed in, Bottas spun his slick-shod Cadillac at the same corner and brought out the Safety Car 1.

That caution was the race's crossover point. The intermediate runners dived in for slick tyres; Mercedes fitted mediums to Antonelli and Russell, and Verstappen took softs 10. At the lap-13 restart Verstappen passed Antonelli around the outside of Turn 1 and completed the move at Turn 2, and Russell followed through to take second from his team-mate at Turn 5 1.

Antonelli retook second from Russell with a move into Turn 4 on lap 21, by which point Verstappen led by five seconds 1. Behind them Hamilton was carving back through the field, passing Lindblad, Ocon and Lawson to reach fifth, while a collision between Bortoleto and Sainz at Turn 2 spun Sainz from the top 10 to 18th 1.

Russell, Verstappen and Antonelli made their final planned stops for softs on laps 33 and 34 1. On lap 43 Albon stopped on track and brought a Virtual Safety Car; Verstappen pitted and rejoined second behind Antonelli, who had yet to stop, and Antonelli and Russell pitted a lap later to hand the lead back to Verstappen. A full Safety Car followed so marshals could move Albon's car 1.

That is where Russell's race ended. Running third and on course for a podium, his Mercedes ground to a halt on the start/finish straight, five laps from the flag 110. At the same moment Norris nearly hit team-mate Piastri under the Safety Car, took to the run-off and dropped to 11th before recovering to ninth 1.

When the race restarted, Hamilton passed Hadjar for third into Turn 1, and Leclerc followed him past the Red Bull a lap later, dropping Hadjar to fifth 1. Verstappen held the lead to the flag, finishing 2.307 seconds clear of Antonelli 2.

The grid split three ways on tyres. Verstappen, both Mercedes, Hadjar, Lawson, Lindblad, Ocon, Sainz and Albon started on intermediates; Hamilton, Leclerc, Gasly, Bortoleto, Hulkenberg, Bearman, Bottas, Perez and Colapinto chose softs; Norris, Piastri, Alonso and Stroll took mediums 1.

The intermediates won the first laps, and the slick runners paid for the gamble as the field streamed past them 1. Hamilton stayed on his opening softs for 29 laps while the rest of the field switched. He had warned Ferrari the track was still wet, but the team judged it would dry quickly and the call went against him. Staying out while the rest of the field switched saved him a stop, and that became the foundation of his recovery 9.

The Safety Car on lap nine settled the race's shape. When the intermediate runners took slicks, Mercedes put both cars on mediums while Verstappen took softs, and that compound difference let the Red Bull pass both at the restart 10. The late Virtual Safety Car and Safety Car produced one more round of stops, with Hamilton swapping back to softs for the run to the flag 1.

Hamilton's comeback, and Leclerc's. Hamilton ran 17th and a minute down after the wrong tyre call, then salvaged third on a 29-lap opening stint and a late switch to softs 9. Leclerc matched him in fourth after an early front-wing change, needed when he touched Hulkenberg's Audi on the opening lap 1. Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said the grid tyre call was wrong: "in the end, we got the call wrong" 10.

Russell's failure and Mercedes' worst weekend. Russell had already been passed by his team-mate and outqualified by him; the late loss of third made it a heavy weekend for a driver chasing Antonelli 6. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff called it "our worst weekend of the season" and said his team "were not quick enough, and we were not reliable enough in Malaysia" 10.

Hadjar's fade. Having run a lonely fourth for much of the race, Hadjar lost two places to the Ferraris in the closing laps and finished fifth 1. He said the car lost power after the final restart: "If this hadn't have happened, I am sure I would have been on the podium" 10. Team principal Laurent Mekies said Red Bull had missed "another double podium" 10.

Racing Bulls cash in, Alpine pay. Lawson took seventh and Lindblad the final point with a last-lap pass on Hulkenberg, extending Racing Bulls' advantage over Alpine in fifth to 22 points 6. Lawson drove much of the race without team radio, which he called "the most alone I've ever felt" 6. A wrong tyre gamble left Gasly 16th and Colapinto 13th, and Gasly described the afternoon as "very painful" 6.

Alonso holds on. Alonso finished eighth for four points, Aston Martin's best result of the season and only its second scoring weekend 56.

McLaren's off weekend. Piastri recovered to sixth and Norris to ninth, but team principal Andrea Stella said his car was "fourth in terms of performance" and that the team could not have beaten Piastri's sixth whatever it did with strategy 10. Norris took responsibility for the Safety Car error that cost him further places 10.

Antonelli leads the Drivers' Championship on 320 points, 84 clear of Russell. Hamilton's podium lifts him to 214 and a clear third, and Verstappen's win draws him level with Norris on 188 4.

Mercedes still leads the Constructors' Championship, but Ferrari's third and fourth cut the gap to 151 and Red Bull's 35-point weekend pulled it to within 18 points of McLaren 5.

The season stays on its current run of races, with the Singapore Grand Prix at Marina Bay on 9-11 October, the final leg of the triple header and a Sprint weekend 1. Antonelli arrives with an 84-point cushion and seven rounds left to defend it.