Race Report: Verstappen beats Antonelli, Hamilton in Sepang

Max Verstappen won the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia (yes, really) from pole. He finished 2.3 seconds ahead of Kimi Antonelli, with Lewis Hamilton third after recovering from seventeenth. It was the first win for Red Bull Ford Powertrains in its first season. George Russell’s late engine failure pushed Antonelli’s championship lead out to 84 points.

Win

Max Verstappen and Red Bull. Five years ago Red Bull decided to build its own engine, and plenty of us thought that was a gamble. Max was quickest in every session and took pole by nearly three tenths. He made the right call to go to softs under the first Safety Car, passed both Mercedes on the restart and drove away. It’s his 72nd win, and he has now won the last two F1 races at Sepang, nine years apart.

Lewis Hamilton. Ferrari started him on slicks on a wet track and he fell from second to seventeenth, a minute off the lead. The team suggested pitting. Lewis said no and stayed out on the softs. Once the track came to him he went from sixteenth to fifth in ten laps. Fresh softs at the final restart got him past Hadjar for his first podium since Silverstone. He called it bittersweet. We’d call it his best drive in red.

Kimi Antonelli. Mercedes didn’t have the car this weekend, but Kimi led early on inters, survived a run wide at the last corner and brought home second. With Russell out, he leads by 84 points with seven races left.

Racing Bulls. Both cars on inters, sensible racing, double points. Lawson made what he called one of the best starts of his life, eleventh to fourth, and finished best of the rest. Lindblad started 22nd in his first ever wet race and passed Hulkenberg on the last lap for the final point. Their lead over Alpine for fifth in the constructors is now 22 points.

Fernando Alonso. Eighth and four points, Aston Martin’s best result of the year. He made two sets of hards last and held off Norris by half a second at the flag. Sepang has always been good to him.

Charles Leclerc. He hit Hulkenberg on lap 1, pitted for a new front wing and dropped to last. Then he came back to fourth, passing Hadjar late.

Fail

George Russell and Mercedes reliability. George was cruising to third when his power unit quit on the main straight behind the final Safety Car. That’s his third DNF of the season and the team’s fourth. Asked if his title hopes were over, he said, “Yeah, yeah, I’d say so.” He’s now only 22 points ahead of Hamilton for second.

The Mercedes upgrade. Their first big package since Canada was supposed to be worth three tenths. Toto said it looked three to five tenths backwards and called this the team’s worst weekend of the season. Because of the cost cap, they can’t just bolt the old parts back on.

Alpine. Several teams gambled on slicks at the start. Alpine’s mistake was staying on them when the track wasn’t drying. Gasly nearly crashed on the formation lap, made four stops and finished sixteenth. Neither car ever ran an intermediate. In Gasly’s words, “We remained with our plan.” Alpine scored zero points on a day Racing Bulls scored seven.

McLaren. Stella said plainly that his car was the fourth fastest here. Norris started on mediums and fell more than a minute behind. Later he got caught out when the pack slowed behind the Safety Car for Russell and went through the gravel. He finished ninth with a reprimand and admitted, “I swore a lot.” Piastri salvaged sixth.

Gabriel Bortoleto. He did a great lap to make Q3, then punted Sainz into a spin at the first restart. That meant damage, a 10 second penalty and eighteenth place. He did apologize to Carlos.

Valtteri Bottas. He spun his Cadillac into the gravel on soft slicks around lap 9 and owned the mistake afterward. His spin brought out the Safety Car that decided the race.

WTH

A software bug stopped a Grand Prix. After a 40 minute rain delay, cars crawled or stopped dead on the formation lap, including both front row starters, and the start was abandoned. The cause was the FIA’s own wet weather energy software. At walking pace, a lockdown designed to stop teams gaming the electric motor kicked in and cut the power. The FIA wrote a fix at the track and sent it to all eleven teams in about 20 minutes. Hamilton said he had never had to stop and restart an F1 car before. Sainz asked who decided five years ago that this was the right direction.

The Bahrain Grand Prix, in Malaysia. Bahrain lost its April date to the war in the region, so it rented Sepang, paid for the move and kept the ticket money. The trophy says Bahrain. The track was 3,750 miles away.

Isack Hadjar’s disappearing battery. He was third after the final restart and then had no battery for two laps, just long enough for both Ferraris to drive past him. His verdict: “We lost the podium on something so stupid.”

Pirelli’s take. Sepang was the first real outing of the year for the intermediate, and Pirelli said it performed well. Once the track dried, the soft was the tire to have. Some drivers ran it for almost half the race.

Bahrain GP Results: