The F1 circus returned to KL for the first time since 2017. I bet the Malaysian tourist board couldn’t believe their luck – an F1 race on their territory, paid for by another country.

To give an indication of just how long Alonso has been in F1, his first time there was 25 years ago, in 2001, and he got his first pole position there two years later. He has won in Malaysia three times for three different teams.

This was his 451st race at the top level. The guy is a machine, and the only reason for him only having two world titles is some poorly timed team choices. Not sure if I’d go to him for advice on when to stay or change jobs.

Talking of which, he and manbaby Stroll were confirmed at Aston Martin for another year. The only teams not to announce their 2027 lineup are RB and Haas, although Haas have announced that Ocon is now a free agent next year so we could well be losing the plucky Frenchman from the sport.

Quali

Lewis has held pole here five times; This time he pushed his Ferrari to 2nd place, close behind Max, who snatched his first pole position of the season. Red Bulls new floor looked to be making a difference, with Hadjar not far behind him in 3rd, although he started further down the field thanks to a 5 place grid penalty for changed components.

This would be the first time in 3 years that Max and Lewis have shared the front row.

Other key highlights George’s lacklustre 8th, the McLarens underwhelming 6th and 7th and the improving Astons in P12 and P14.

Race

Well, that was fun.

(bah)Rain had been forecast at some point over the weekend, and when it finally arrived just as the grid was forming, it came down in buckets. Martin Brundle got very wet on his gridwalk.

This would be the first outing in these conditions for the latest generation of cars. In at the deep end (splash), and indeed it was chaotic. For those of us who got up early on Sunday morning to watch the race, we had to wait a full race duration of delays before things finally got going after almost two hours.

One of the reasons was because there was total chaos behind the safety car when they first tried to start the race.

First, Verstappen struggled for power, backing the field up before finding an emergency mode. Behind him, after being backed up by Max, Lewis had a similar issue. He was coasting and we had the crazy situation where other cars didn’t know if they were allowed to pass him. Then some of those other cars started to have the same issue!

Lewis stopped on the pit straight, did a ctrl-alt-del and was able to resume, but way down the field.

In the end, so many others were experiencing similar issues that the safety car actually caught some of them up. The start procedure was aborted and they all filed into the pit lane, which resulted in a bizarre traffic jam with the safety car in the middle!

In the commentary, Anthony Davidson described what had happened in some detail - feel free to fast forward this bit.

It was caused by a technical trap in the 2026 power unit config, which was intended to stop teams trying to implement electronic traction control, but it failed when driving slowly in wet conditions. The breakdown occurred in a specific sequence:

The Turbo Spools Down: Driving at heavily reduced speeds behind the safety car in the rain caused the turbos to completely spool down.

Battery Drains Instantly: When drivers stepped back on the throttle, the lack of turbo pressure forced the system to dump all its available electrical battery power ("engine juice") to try and accelerate.

The FIA Regulation Trap: Once the battery went flat, the cars were left running solely on the internal combustion engine. Because a sluggish engine without turbo boost cannot meet the driver's sudden torque demands, the power output fell outside strict FIA anti-traction control parameters, triggering a software glitch that prevented the engine from re-accelerating.

The more people slowed down, the more of them hit the issue.

This years cars are more like computers than ever, and as if to reinforce that point, the FIA’s tech team quickly bodged up a software patch for the ECUs which overrode the faulty logic. They asked all teams to apply it as a hot upgrade.

In the pits, 20 mins before the restart!

I’ve done some high pressure software updates in my time but that takes the biscuit - a live update at such a critical time was high risk, but it seemed to do the job.

There followed a game of Tetris in the pits while they shuffled the cars back into grid order - There had been some discussions about whether drivers should restart in the order they came into the pits because the regs could be interpreted as saying this. The most pragmatic thing to do was to reset, but we know from Abu Dhabi 2021 that making up rules for pragmatic reasons doesn’t always go well. Thankfully sense prevailed.

A race, finally

The good news was that this left us with a fascinating restart. It hadn’t rained for a good 40 mins and the circuit was expected to dry quickly, so it was a 50/50 gamble as to whether to go for intermediate wets or slicks. 14 went for the wets, with Hamilton being one of the 8 risking slicks.

The slicks were a disaster. Within a lap all the slick runners had fallen to the back, and the track seemed not to be drying as quickly as it had in the past. Mercedes had a fantastic start, particularly Russell who leapt from 7th to 2nd behind Kimi who had gone from 3rd to 1st.

After 5 laps Hamilton was almost a minute behind the field. The people on Inters were still quicker but his soft slicks were finally starting to fire up.

At that point Ferrari called him in for wets. He challenged it, saying they should gamble. That decision eventually got him a podium, but it certainly wasn’t an easy route from there.

Leclerc followed the teams instructions, pitted for inters and overtook Hamilton. Norris did the same. Hamilton was now in 18th place, 80 seconds behind the pack. It was looking like his gamble hadn’t paid off.

Then Bottas stuck it in the kitty litter, bringing out the safety car. The bad news for Hamilton was that all the inters folks got a free pit stop, but the good news was that it bunched up the field, wiping out that 80 second deficit. Everyone other than him stopped for slicks, which got him to the front of those who had originally started on slicks. That was still only 16th place though.

At the front, Verstappen took the lead at the restart. George got past Kimi, then things settled down a bit. Behind them Lewis was having the drive of his life, scything through the field, gradually working his way towards the front. He managed to make that initial set of slicks last for most of the race - he was the only drive to stop only once.

Behind Verstappen, Russell couldn’t keep Kimi behind him, but then it settled down and it looked like a safe 2-3 for Mercedes.

Then just 5 laps from end, disaster for George. During a lengthy safety car to clear Albon’s broken down Williams, Russells car ground to a halt.

The guy just doesn’t have the luck. That’s his 3rd retirement this year, vs Zero for his teammate. He’s now 84 points behind Kimi, who all-but has his hands on the championship trophy.

Without Russells retirements from the lead in Canada and from 3rd in Belgium and Bahlaysia, I estimate there would only be around 22 points between them. He must be so gutted.

Behind George, the field bunched as he slowed, catching Lando out, and he ended up driving through the gravel to avoid his teammate. He made it out but lost several places.

Then it was a 3 lap sprint to the line. Lewis overtook Hadjar, making up the final place of his recovery, finishing 3rd. Given his climb from 18th he must be wondering if he could’ve won it if it had been full dry.

Before this race, Max had only lead 11 laps this season. Today he led more than 40, and crossed the line in 1st place. Kimi was 2nd, Lewis 3rd. Leclerc also slipped past Hadjar into 4th.

Phew

Some trivia to close

• It’s Max’s first win this season, and also the first win for the new Red Bull powertrain
• He won the last race held in Malaysia.
• That was his 2nd win; This was his 72nd.
• Supergeek fact: at 9 years it’s the longest ever gap between consecutive wins from a driver at the same circuit. The prior record was 7 years, held by Nigel Mansel (Kyalami 85 and 92)

Time for a lie-down now