Brundle: Bahrain GP Software Glitch and Tyre Chaos — SkimNews
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- FIA software in the standard control 'brain' miscalculated as cars crawled behind the Safety Car in heavy rain, shutting down power delivery on multiple Ferrari-powered, Red Bull Powertrains and McLaren-Mercedes cars
- The race restart was delayed 40 minutes while the FIA rewrote code adjusting power unit parameters for sub-50 kph operation, then flashed the patch to all cars and restarted in original grid order
- Sepang's worn asphalt — riddled with tiny water pockets and reaching over 60°C surface temperatures — acted like a sponge and refused to dry, leaving Ferrari, McLaren, Audi and Aston Martin stranded on wrong slick dry tyres while Oscar Piastri and Audi had chosen intermediates
- Max Verstappen won for Red Bull after leading most of the race on intermediate tyres, with championship leader Kimi Antonelli in second for Mercedes following quality overtakes between him and George Russell
- Lewis Hamilton ran his starting soft-compound dry tyres for 31 laps without pitting — a strategy that paid dividends as the track finally dried, after he had refused an early switch to intermediates
- George Russell retired on lap 42 of 55 after a power-unit failure during the Safety Car period, an image Brundle says 'sums up his whole season' and which may force fresh power-unit elements and a grid penalty at Singapore
Why it matters: With this the first wet running for the all-new 2026 cars, the Sepang race exposed a parity-enforcing FIA software system that couldn't cope with Safety Car pace and a Sepang surface that fooled four teams' tyre strategists, while Russell's engine failure potentially hands him another grid penalty — meaning both software readiness and surface-reading are now unresolved variables heading into Singapore.
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