Drivers faced glitches at the race in Malaysia, where Lewis Hamilton had to stop and restart his car on the track.<\/p>\n
Published On 5 Oct 20265 Oct 2026<\/p>\n
Formula One\u2019s governing body has promised a full investigation into a software bug that caused chaos and forced the start of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia to be aborted, with drivers feeling like they were in battery-powered cars made of Lego.<\/p>\n
Ferrari\u2019s seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton<\/a> and Red Bull\u2019s four-time champion and eventual race winner Max Verstappen<\/a> were among several affected by the glitch on a formation lap after torrential rain and a long delay at Malaysia\u2019s steamy Sepang circuit on Sunday.<\/p>\n Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n Verstappen compared the experience to a \u201cLego race\u201d held at Silverstone before the British Grand Prix while Hamilton, the sport\u2019s most successful driver of all time, had to stop his car on track and restart it in what he said was a career first.<\/p>\n The episode was the latest in a difficult first season for the new era of cars and engines, with drivers at the pinnacle of motorsport unhappy since the opening race with the power units\u2019 increased electrical component and the need for energy management.<\/p>\n FIA said afterwards that \u201can unprecedented combination of low engine speed, low-grip conditions, wet-weather energy management settings and the Sepang circuit\u2019s sector configuration led to an unintended loss of power for a number of cars\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a result, the FIA technical department removed the energy limit constraint in the affected sectors through an updated software release distributed to all competitors during the race delay caused by heavy rain, enabling teams to make the necessary changes to the power unit before the start of the race.<\/p>\n \u201cThis issue had not been detected by the FIA or the teams during testing or during the laps to the grid. The FIA, together with the teams and power unit manufacturers, will undertake a full review of the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n The FIA\u2019s single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis told reporters the lack of preseason testing in wet conditions had played a part in the chaos.<\/p>\n \u201cSome cars went very slowly, almost came to a standstill. There was a bit of a concertina effect between cars, and some cars almost stopped completely,\u201d he said. \u201cThat bug prevented the power from being redeployed, and for the cars to start again.<\/p>\n \u201cI think if we had had a bit more testing, we probably would have managed to catch it in time, and not have such a situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Sepang was the first race weekend of the season with wet conditions, although the track dried during the race.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes things fall through the net and people learn, and you do a better job next time,\u201d Tombazis said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drivers faced glitches at the race in Malaysia, where Lewis Hamilton had to stop and restart his car…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":921860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[6109,3846,49,48,578,576,577,3845,1259,12716,457,82],"class_list":["post-921859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-asia-pacific","tag-bahrain","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-malaysia","tag-middle-east","tag-motorsports","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=921859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/921860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}