{"id":915577,"date":"2026-10-04T07:44:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T07:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/915577\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T07:44:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T07:44:15","slug":"bahrain-grand-prix-f1-2026-live-max-verstappen-on-pole-oscar-piastri-6th-on-the-grid-as-racing-returns-to-sepang-international-circuit-malaysia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/915577\/","title":{"rendered":"Bahrain Grand Prix F1 2026 LIVE: Max Verstappen on pole, Oscar Piastri 6th on the grid as racing returns to Sepang International Circuit, Malaysia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Oscar Piastri is bracing himself for another \u201cchallenging\u201d day in his McLaren at the Sepang International Circuit after he could only finish seventh in qualifying at the Bahrain Grand Prix.<\/p>\n<p>With his teammate, world champion Lando Norris, only finishing sixth on Saturday, the Australian admitted it was \u201cgoing to be tough\u201d for McLaren to battle out of the midfield as Max Verstappen looked the man to beat again following his first pole of the season.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Piastri will start from sixth.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/b2fc1fdd11438d01be83aad2e1dade34e1fbbac6.jpeg\"  class=\"sc-d34e428-1 ldCIuB\"\/>Piastri will start from sixth.Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>It felt almost like the clock had been wound back with Verstappen and his old rival, Ferrari\u2019s Lewis Hamilton, back on the front row together, but McLaren looked out of the picture with Norris conceding the team was \u201cstruggling\u201d at the Bahrain race that\u2019s been moved to Malaysia because of the Middle East conflict.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was tricky out there for sure,\u201d sighed Piastri, who\u2019ll start from sixth on the grid after third-placed qualifier Isack Hadjar suffered a five-place penalty for an engine change. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri is bracing himself for another \u201cchallenging\u201d day in his McLaren at the Sepang International Circuit after&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":915578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-915577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915577","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=915577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}