The start of the first wet-weather race of the 2026 Formula 1 season descended into chaos. Leader Max Verstappen was the first to suffer from a lack of power while driving slowly during the formation laps behind the safety car, after which Lewis Hamilton came to a standstill and several other cars followed. Race control was forced to stop the formation lap with a red flag, after which there was a 40-minute delay before fans actually got to see some F1 action.
FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis confirmed to media including Autosport that a bug in the software supplied by the FIA and developed together with the teams over the course of multiple years was responsible for the chaos. “We didn't manage to test the software as extensively as we would have liked because there's been very little wet running this year. There was a bit of a combination of circumstances which caused this bug to kick in,” Tombazis said during an impromptu media session post-race.
This is closely related to the reduction in electrical power to 250kW in wet conditions. Although the software required for this was tested by several teams, including Red Bull and Racing Bulls, it was not tested in the conditions behind the safety car – and therefore not at these extremely low speeds. At the Sepang International Circuit, those low speeds were reached in certain minisectors, with all the consequences that followed.
The FIA then had to react quickly to get the race near Kuala Lumpur under way after all. “Fortunately, our guys understood the issue very, very quickly. I think the update was done very competently. It was obviously a rush job. The priority was to get the race going,” Tombazis explained when asked by Autosport.
Source: Autosport F1 News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing