Verstappen Wins Rain-Hit Sepang Thriller as Russell’s Title Hopes Fade
Max Verstappen claimed his first victory of 2026 at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia on October 4, beating championship leader Kimi Antonelli by 2.307 seconds. Lewis Hamilton completed the podium ahead of Charles Leclerc, Isack Hadjar and Oscar Piastri. The victory was also the first for Red Bull Ford Powertrains, providing a significant validation of Red Bull’s improving car and new engine program.
Heavy rain delayed the start and created the race’s decisive strategic split. Antonelli and George Russell started on intermediates and swept past polesitter Verstappen, giving Mercedes an early one-two. Ferrari, McLaren, Haas and Cadillac were among the teams gambling on slicks, but the circuit remained wet considerably longer than expected.
Valtteri Bottas’s spin brought out the first Safety Car and gave the intermediate runners an inexpensive opportunity to switch to slicks. Red Bull selected soft tires for Verstappen while Mercedes fitted mediums. That compound difference transformed the race: Verstappen quickly passed Russell and Antonelli before building a comfortable lead. A late Safety Car erased his advantage, but another set of softs allowed him to control the restart and finish 2.3 seconds clear of the field.
Antonelli’s second place became substantially more valuable when Russell stopped with an apparent power-unit failure while running third. Hamilton inherited the podium after an impressive recovery from the unsuccessful slick start, while Leclerc rebounded from last place, first-lap contact and a replacement front wing to finish fourth. McLaren’s race was less convincing: Piastri recovered to sixth, but Norris finished ninth after starting on slicks, struggling for pace and sliding through the gravel behind the final Safety Car.
Antonelli now leads Russell by 84 points, 320–236, with seven rounds remaining. Russell remains the nearest—and only remotely credible—challenger, but his retirement turned what could have been a three-point loss into an 18-point swing. Hamilton sits 106 points behind Antonelli; Leclerc is 129 back, with Norris and Verstappen tied 132 behind. Mercedes leads Ferrari by 151 points in the Constructors’ Championship, leaving Ferrari as its only plausible challenger, though both championships are increasingly under Antonelli and Mercedes control.
Haas missed an opportunity one week after its double-points finish in Baku. Esteban Ocon’s intermediate-tire start launched him into sixth and kept him around the points for much of the race. However, he stopped shortly before the late Virtual Safety Car and stayed out when it became a full Safety Car; his older soft tires lost temperature, and an error entering the pits added further time. He fell to 15th. Oliver Bearman’s slick gamble cost approximately 40 seconds before he recovered to 14th with encouraging pace. Haas remains seventh, 10 points ahead of Audi, but its execution did not match the car’s potential.
Cadillac endured another bruising afternoon. Both drivers started on softs, expecting rapid drying. Bottas lost the rear at Turn 13 and became the race’s first retirement, while Sergio Pérez made seven pit-lane visits as Cadillac repeatedly reacted to changing conditions and poorly timed Safety Cars. Pérez showed competitive pace on intermediates and initially created a useful gap, but finished 19th after the field was repeatedly compressed. Cadillac remains scoreless, with its first wet race exposing both inexperience and the continuing difficulty of converting occasional pace into a complete weekend. See you next week in Sinagapore.