Red Bull catapulted to the top of the standings for its first pole of the year, the first for a non-Mercedes-powered car in 2026, grabbed headlines at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.
And that makes our winners and losers even more of a goldmine, as we evaluate the best and worst performances of the day.
Loser: Mercedes (4th & 8th)
It was Mercedes’ worst qualifying performance since Hungary, where Kimi Antonelli finished fourth and George Russell seventh, and the temptation is to conclude that the substantial improvement Mercedes made in Malaysia is not working.
Team boss Toto Wolff told Sky Sports F1 that Mercedes “still believe the upgrade works” but will need to comb through the data after discovering the car “seems to be very draggy”.
“This is the first time we have lost a lot of time on the straights, especially against Max,” added Wolff. “And then at low speed, in Turn 2, we’re not able to turn the car. There’s just too much understeer. So overall we haven’t seen things all year.”
Russell and Antonelli highlighted the “abrasiveness of the tarmac” (in Russell’s words) making Sepang an outlier circuit, with Antonelli suggesting “all year round, whenever we rode tracks like this with very open tarmac, we always struggled.
“So is it because of the tarmac and because it’s very hot there? Or is it because maybe we’re missing something with the new package?”
Mercedes is a bit stuck at the moment, as it definitely feels the upgrade has improved the car in high-speed cornering, as it was designed to do, but that seems to have come at the expense of its earlier strengths in low-speed cornering and straight-line efficiency.
And now the cars are in parc ferme after qualifying, there’s no going back unless you want to start from pit lane again, and the old parts were reaching the end of their natural lifespan anyway, so with the cost cap Mercedes can’t afford to go back and have to find a way to make this work.
“All the numbers point to it being an improvement,” Russell said. “But this is obviously a sport where we have to follow lap times and not what the numbers say.”
“The numbers look absolutely good and in line with expectations, but the result is not.” -Ben Anderson
Winner: Max Verstappen (1st)
Nine years later, Max Verstappen and Red Bull are still the fastest combination around Sepang and who would bet against him in the race?
Having not been in pole position all season, Verstappen looked relatively comfortable throughout qualifying, leading every session and taking pole by three tenths.
His teammate Isack Hadjar had a good day for Red Bull (even if he will fall five places on the grid), but Verstappen’s lead of four tenths over him shows the difference made by the four-time world champion. -Josh Suttill
Winner: Aston Martin (12th & 14th)
Easily Aston Martin-Honda’s best performance of the season so far, combining the lighter B-spec car first introduced in Hungary with Honda’s upgraded ADUO 2 engine – which doesn’t seem like a giant leap but at least doesn’t penalize the car to the extent that Honda’s engine has so far in 2026.
Alonso was just over four tenths behind in Q3, while Lance Stroll – who felt the car “clicked for me on the second push lap in Q1 and handled much better” – was only two places and 0.346 seconds further back, and could have done better without some scrappy driving in Q2.
In iconic Alonso hyperbole, he called it “a miracle that we were fighting with cars much faster than us.”
“It’s without a doubt our best weekend in terms of car performance,” and “definitely a step forward in terms of competitiveness,” Alonso also said.
“The car is exactly the same as the last four rounds, since Budapest, so that just tells us that depending on the layout of the circuit and how many straights we have, we can be more or less competitive.”
Although it must be said that he expects to go backwards and not forward on Sunday, thanks to the “miracle” mentioned above and “a few fast cars starting behind us with a few penalties and that tomorrow they will come back in force”. – B.A.
Winner: Lewis Hamilton (2nd)
Ferrari’s qualifying execution has been a constant problem for Lewis Hamilton for much of his time with the team, but Hamilton described Ferrari’s timing in Malaysia as “perfect”.
He said he was surprised to be on the front row for the first time since Barcelona, after watching the third row in pre-qualifying.
“These cars are so sensitive; you make the slightest change and it’s ridiculous what difference it can make from one run, from one session to the next,” Hamilton said.
“A click of front wing or a millimeter of ride height, a quarter of a degree of camber, 0.1 of toe, something like that. These little things make such a big difference to the balance, it’s literally a moving target that you’re trying to get around, with the settings and also the controls that we have.”
“Even understanding throttle application, if you get to full throttle too early here, your stair (descent ramp) starts early and you lose time on the straights. Those are things that I think a lot of us don’t like.
“To master it all together is a huge challenge. We are so on the limit because we lose so much on the straights.” -JS
Winner: Gabriel Bortoleto (10th)
His Audi teammate went out in Q1 and managed to qualify for Q3, so Gabriel Bortoleto can sleep well knowing he had a good day.
The Audi team appeared to have gone backwards in Baku, despite its huge upgrade programme, but through some introspection and “long nights” at the factory, it appears to be unlocking some of this new performance.
That, plus what Bortoleto described as “when you do really good laps and the car is in a good window and you feel comfortable, sometimes you can do something great.”
Self-proclaimed “greatness” can be shocking, but it’s hard to deny Bortoleto a dose of that today. -Jack Benyon
Winner: Valtteri Bottas (21st)
Valtteri Bottas looked “pretty slow” in Baku by his own admission, so qualifying more than three tenths ahead of Cadillac teammate Sergio Perez in Malaysia was the perfect response.
It features the upgraded Ferrari ADUO 2 engine for the first time this weekend, an engine that Pérez chose not to use, after using it in Baku, in order to save mileage for a different track.
“There is a difference. It’s not a huge difference, but there is a difference, so it’s good to have it,” Bottas said of the engine upgrade.
Asked by The Race if he felt fit again after Baku, Bottas replied: “Something was definitely wrong last weekend, we were so far from it, but we changed a lot of things and now the car is back to normal.”
“No issues at all this weekend, so just being able to get into the rhythm, do the tune-up work and go from there.” -JS
Loser: Alex Albon (20th)
Two races with the new evolution of Williams, beaten twice by his teammate. It wasn’t a good day for Alex Albon.
While Carlos Sainz said he had put in better laps than the ones in Baku that got him into Q3 and perhaps his best this year, Albon was another casualty of a wide run on the Turn 14 right-hander that leads to the back straight.
But Albon believes the team is “struggling with parts” – quality over quantity in this case – and that a change for qualifying “made it even worse”. So maybe that explains the deficit between the two.
“If we have to make a start in the pits tomorrow (to change parts), so be it,” he added. -JB
Loser: Haas (18th and 19th)
Haas’ worst qualifying result of the 2026 F1 season comes just after the team’s first double points score of the year.
Esteban Ocon felt he was sent off too early in Q1 so he missed out on the best track conditions, while Ollie Bearman says he was compromised by messy testing sessions, including poor settings applied to his car.
“For me, the problem lasted all weekend,” Bearman said. “We started in FP1, it was okay, but then in FP2 we had a problem with the car settings.
“Basically the settings we intended to put on the car were not the ones that ended up on the car.
“The car ended up in a state that we never intended to run a race car in, not even on an oval.
“The only time I had a good car and a good feeling was in that last (qualifying) run.
“I didn’t get everything out of the tire because it was the first time I had good balance all weekend.” -JS
Loser: Nico Hülkenberg (17th)
A big moment at turn 14 wiped out Nico Hulkenberg’s chances of going 0.087 seconds further into Q1.
This could have been considered normal given the team’s performance in Baku, but we already know that Bortoleto put the car in Q3, so this can only be seen as a mistake that creates an embarrassing qualifying deficit for the only person you can. Really compare Hülkenberg to his teammate.
“Disappointed in myself, I didn’t manage to complete the lap,” he said.
Hülkenberg has a nifty way of negating these setbacks on race day, so don’t count him out.
Especially since Bortoleto proved that Audi’s lack of straight line speed – which won’t improve much for the rest of the season – won’t be the thing that stops Audi from struggling in the midfield this weekend. -JB
Gn sports
