Verstappen ends drought in software-hit, rain-soaked Bahrain thriller
Max Verstappen won his first race of the season in a dramatic, rain-affected Bahrain Grand Prix, beating Kimi Antonelli and Lewis Hamilton.
Antonelli finished second in a Mercedes to stretch his championship lead to 84 points. Hamilton was third for Ferrari after the wrong tyre choice at the start. George Russell failed to finish after an engine failure.
The start was anything but normal. A 25-minute spell with no more rain before the start left the track pretty dry, yet several cars had the wrong tyres for the conditions. Those who started on intermediate tyres — the grooved rubber used for damp tracks — dived into the pits for slicks, the smooth dry-weather tyres, after a safety car on lap nine, according to BBC Sport.
There was a deeper problem too. A bug in the wet-weather engine settings hit a number of cars, including Verstappen and Hamilton on the front row. Formation laps were aborted so new code could be written and passed to the teams to upload as a fix.
It recalled other wet-weather scrambles. Verstappen won the 2024 Brazilian Grand Prix from 17th on the grid in wet conditions. Formula 1 drivers also have a collective agreement not to race when they cannot see where they are going.
The fallout was still being picked apart in a fan question-and-answer with BBC F1 correspondent Andrew Benson before the Singapore Grand Prix at Marina Bay, described as Formula 1's original night race. A separate report headlined 'Hamilton bemused after glitch turns F1 into Lego race' was updated on Sunday, 4 October 2026.
What makes this stand out is the mix of high-tech failure and old-fashioned racecraft. The timing screens told one story. The pit lane told another, with engineers rewriting software on the grid and strategists gambling on a drying track.
For fans, this means the title maths has shifted again without the fight feeling settled. Antonelli's 84-point cushion is large. Verstappen's return to the top step shows it is not safe.
