Lewis Hamilton of Ferrari will start second on the grid in Sepang, with Red Bull\u2019s \u2060Isack Hadjar third.<\/p>\n
Published On 3 Oct 20263 Oct 2026<\/p>\n
Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen has claimed his first \u2060pole position of the season at the Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, with Ferrari\u2019s Lewis Hamilton joining him on the front row.<\/p>\n
Verstappen\u2019s team mate \u2060Isack Hadjar was third fastest but will start eighth due to a grid penalty on Saturday, with championship leader Kimi Antonelli in third alongside Ferrari\u2019s Charles Leclerc.<\/p>\n
Verstappen was the last driver to win a Grand Prix in Malaysia in 2017, in what was his second career victory, before \u200cthe race was taken off the calendar after the government said it could not justify the costs.<\/p>\n
Nine years and four championships later, the Dutchman showed he was still the man to beat in Sepang with a time of one minute and 35.130 seconds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fantastic, we\u2019ve been trying for many Grands Prix to get more, sometimes a bit closer to the others. But to finally get it from where we started \u2060the season, pretty incredible,\u201d said Verstappen as he eyes his first \u2060win of the season.<\/p>\n
Hamilton, who also has one victory in Sepang, struggled with tyre degradation in practice sessions but the veteran Briton snatched second from Hadjar in the dying stages of the final qualifying session.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so \u2060hot here, I keep saying it. But that\u2019s made it a massive challenge for the tyres, for the car, for the \u2060mechanics in the garage,\u201d Hamilton said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made so many \u2060changes through all these practice sessions because the cars are sliding, these tyres are overheating. It was really, really hard to find a good balance. We made one last change going into qualifying and I think we \u200chit the sweet spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hadjar had exceeded his seasonal allowance for engines, which resulted in a five-place grid penalty.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bit unfortunate we take the penalty on a track that \u200cfast,\u201d \u200cHadjar said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you know, from P8, I\u2019m confident we can go through the field and come back for a good result.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton of Ferrari will start second on the grid in Sepang, with Red Bull\u2019s \u2060Isack Hadjar third.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":914540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[77,64,63,817,813,816,935,3152,588,85],"class_list":["post-914539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-asia-pacific","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-malaysia","tag-motorsports","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=914539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}