A software defect in Formula 1's common car control code forced the series to abort the start of its race in Sepang, Malaysia, on Sunday and distribute an emergency patch roughly an hour before the event could begin. The race had been moved to the Sepang International Circuit because the ongoing war with Iran ruled out holding it in Bahrain. Heavy rain arrived about half an hour before the scheduled start, and organizers called for two formation laps behind the safety car so drivers could read the track and let their intermediate tires clear water.
The plan ran into a bug. Running slowly behind the safety car, with hybrid power reduced in some sections because of the extreme wet, led several cars to conclude they were being tricked into violating a hard-coded anti-cheating rule. That triggered an automatic 60-second shutdown of their electric motors, and car after car slowed for the one ahead as systems took varying times to reboot. Max Verstappen of Red Bull compared the scene to the human-size Lego cars F1 used for a driver parade at the 2025 Miami Grand Prix, describing cars running five-wide on the straight while others crawled.
The FIA wrote and distributed a software update, a process that Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA's head of single-seater racing, said took about 20 minutes to issue and required teams to apply it and confirm the work was done. Tombazis said the weather-dependent power settings had barely been exercised because the season had produced almost no wet running, and that the extremely low formation-lap speeds combined with those settings to put the affected cars into the bug. The software is developed by the FIA together with the teams and engine makers and is common to all cars.
The delay lasted long enough that the rain stopped and standing water drained, prompting just over half the grid to gamble on slick tires. Only nine drivers chose intermediates, among them polesitter Verstappen, championship leader Kimi Antonelli and his Mercedes teammate George Russell. Lewis Hamilton, starting second, chose a slick and was soon left behind; he told his race engineer on lap five he would gamble on the conditions turning in his favor. Verstappen had a poor start and dropped to third behind both Mercedes, then passed Russell on lap six.
When the race restarted on lap 13, Verstappen took the lead from Antonelli, with Russell following into second. Hamilton climbed from 15th to 11th within a lap and into fifth within 10 laps of the restart. Fernando Alonso also moved forward in an Aston Martin carrying an Adrian Newey-designed aerodynamic update introduced in Hungary and a second Honda power unit upgrade, reaching 10th by lap 40. Alex Albon's Williams suffered a gearbox failure on lap 43, bringing a virtual safety car and then a full safety car.
The race restarted on lap 52 of 55, but Russell had stopped by the side of the track just past the pit exit on lap 50 with what he called another power unit failure, saying his 2026 title chances were over. Hamilton passed Isack Hadjar for third, recovering to the podium after trailing the lead by more than a minute at one point. Verstappen described his own start as horrendous, saying the engine died when he dropped the clutch, and that he settled in and closed the gap step by step.
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