Formula 1 encountered a chaotic beginning to the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia on Sunday due to a malfunction in FIA software that caused vehicles to halt near the Sepang circuit during a wet formation lap prior to the race’s commencement. Temporarily, it resembled the sport’s most severe PR crisis since the 2005 US Grand Prix, where Michelin runners withdrew at the conclusion of the formation lap, with only six cars finishing the race.
Software glitch halts cars on formation lap
The problem stemmed from a wet-weather setting embedded in the universal software platform employed by every team and power-unit builder. This function is intended for safety, reducing the electric output from 350 kW down to 250 kW in designated parts of the circuit. Because this season had seen almost no rain-affected sessions until the Malaysian weekend and only a handful of wet-tire tests, the crews had not fully vetted the wet-mode.
The glitch first manifested when the cars were crawling at low revs on the soggy formation lap, with pole-sitters Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton being the initial complainants. Soon drivers further back began to decelerate or even coast to a stop, asking their engineers for the equivalent of a “control-alt-delete”. Hamilton later said, “I had to stop on track and stop the car and engine and restart it,” adding, “I’ve never done that before. I hope there is a lesson learned.”
“My throttle pedal stopped working,” said Ollie Bearman. “But it looks like everybody’s stopped working as well. So weird. It was like it was not connected. The engine was just idling.” Perez described the lack of power as “not great what happened today. I’m sure we will learn from it as a sport. What happened today is totally unacceptable for the sport.”
Read Also: Riverside Raceway Built in California’s Desert Becomes Racing Destination
It was a complex issue, but in essence, as cars ran at ultra-low speeds on the formation lap – with the wet weather mode in operation for the first time in an official session – a bug was triggered that put the power units into a sort of sleep mode for 60 seconds. After the race, the FIA’s single-seater boss Nikolas Tombazis, the man largely responsible for the 2026 regulations, explained what happened.
FIA explains formation lap power unit bug
“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,” he said. “And there was a bit of a combination of circumstances which caused this bug to kick in. Basically, the formation laps, some cars went very slowly, almost came to a standstill. There was a bit of a concertina effect between cars, and some cars almost stopped completely. And that bug prevented the power from being redeployed and the cars from starting again.”
He added: “In some sectors the full power is reduced, and the triggering factor was some cars reaching a very low speed. I don’t know exactly what speed that was, but some cars reaching this very low speed somehow entered into a loop, which meant they couldn’t reaccelerate, and then it looked as if they came to a stop.”
Engineers race to patch system during delay
Continuing the race on a wet circuit without intervention was impossible, but the FIA’s on-site software engineers quickly devised a temporary patch that was distributed to every team and installed during the mandatory pause. Tombazis noted, “Once the problem happened, our guys realized very quickly what was happening and had to work very under a lot of time pressure for an update to the software.”
Read Also: Mazda adds profanity-capable speaker to Chinese-built SUV
“Which was issued to the teams, and the teams had to install it on their cars. So all of that took about 20 minutes. It may have felt like five hours for spectators waiting for a race, and for everybody else, which is understandable, and we are sorry about that. But I think it was quite a fast reaction given the problem.”
He elaborated that the patch overrode some of these reductions of power. He admitted there was no luxury of a multi-day development window, only a few minutes were available, making it a hurried job. Nevertheless, he believes the fix was applied without jeopardising safety, competition or equity.
“I don’t know of any software that doesn’t have bugs and updates. Your computer probably gets updated every three days; those are all bugs. Of course, you hope to anticipate these things. But sometimes some very combination of events isn’t properly anticipated and causes the problem,” he said.
