FIA reveals why F1 cars stopped in the rain at Bahrain GP in Malaysia

October 4, 2026 9 Min Read

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The FIA has explained why Formula 1 cars experienced technical problems ahead of Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.

The start of the Sepang race was delayed by 40 minutes due to a downpour; Then a chaotic formation lap saw front-row starters Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton suffer an issue that rendered throttle action ineffective, with many cars stopping. The red flag was raised.

The situation was described as “unacceptable” by Sergio Pérez; Lando Norris described it as “just horrible” and as proof that “we shouldn’t have all this, the electronic side”, given that it was linked to the new Formula 1 machines, which have 47% electric power.

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FIA single-seater Nikolas Tombazis has now explained that, given F1 had never had competition in real-world wet conditions this season, he was surprised by the powertrain’s reaction to the extremely slow-moving cars at that time. A software update therefore had to be carried out, resulting in a delay of 53 minutes to restart the race.

“We didn’t manage to test the software as much as we would have liked, because there was very little wet driving this year, and there was a small coincidence that caused this bug to appear,” Tombazis said.

Nikolas Tombazis, FIA

Photo by: Kym Illman/Getty Images

“Basically, on the formation lap, some cars were going very slow, almost stopping. There was a little concertina effect between the cars, and some cars were stopping almost completely. And this bug was preventing the power from being redeployed and the cars from restarting. I think if we had done a little more testing, we probably would have managed to catch it in time and not have a situation like this.”

Tombazis praised the FIA’s response in resolving the issue as quickly as possible.

“Once the problem occurred, our guys realized very quickly what was happening and had to work under a lot of pressure to get a software update, which was distributed to the teams, and they had to install it on their cars,” he added.

“So the whole thing took about 20 minutes. It may have felt like five hours to the spectators waiting for a race and to everyone else, which is understandable, and we’re sorry about that. But I think it was a pretty quick reaction given the problem.”

Not everyone was as upset about some cars’ struggles, with eighth-place finisher Fernando Alonso joking at the end of an exceptionally good day for Aston Martin-Honda: “I’ve had 50% DNFs this year, they never stopped the race for us.”