The Bahrain Grand Prix is happening 6,000 km from Bahrain — and F1 is going back to a circuit it walked away from nine years ago.
A Grand Prix Far From Home
This weekend's race is still called the Bahrain Grand Prix. It is not being held in Bahrain. After a regional conflict that began in late February made the Gulf unsafe for the event, Formula 1, the FIA and both governments agreed to relocate the race to Malaysia's Sepang International Circuit, with Bahrain keeping the event's proceeds and ticketing rights — which is why the name travelled with it.
It's one of the stranger entries the calendar has produced: a Grand Prix named after one country, run in another, more than 6,000 km away.
The Malaysian Grand Prix ran here from 1999 until 2017, then dropped off the calendar. Sepang has been resurfaced in sections since — and no current-generation car has ever turned a lap here.
When To Watch
| Session | Malaysia | UK | US East | India |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FP1 — Fri | 12:30 | 05:30 | 00:30 | 10:00 |
| FP2 — Fri | 16:00 | 09:00 | 04:00 | 13:30 |
| FP3 — Sat | 12:30 | 05:30 | 00:30 | 10:00 |
| Qualifying — Sat | 16:00 | 09:00 | 04:00 | 13:30 |
| RACE — Sun | 15:00 | 08:00 | 03:00 | 12:30 |
Malaysia is UTC+8. For North American viewers the race lands in the small hours of Sunday morning — set something, or accept you'll be watching a replay.
The Circuit
Sepang International Circuit
Sepang was the track that started it all — Tilke's first great modern design, and the template copied across Asia for the next twenty years. Two enormous straights separated by a tight hairpin, a sequence of long, loading, double-apex corners, and a surface abrasive enough to chew tyres in heat that regularly pushes past 50°C on track.
It rewards a car that can carry speed through long medium-speed turns while still stopping hard at the end of a 900-metre straight — and it punishes anyone who gets tyre temperature wrong. Of its 15 corners, nine are medium-speed, which is exactly the range where the 2026 cars are least understood.
And then there's the sky. Sepang sits a hundred-odd kilometres from the equator, where afternoon storms arrive fast, dump an extraordinary amount of water, and leave. More than one Malaysian Grand Prix has been decided by a cloud.
Five Things To Watch
Nobody has any data
This is the real wildcard. No team has run a current-generation car here, the simulator models are built on a decade-old surface that has since been partly resurfaced, and the usual reference laps are worthless. Friday practice stops being a formality and becomes the whole weekend. Whoever converts limited running into a working setup fastest will start Sunday with an advantage they didn't have to earn on pace.
Hamilton can break a record he shares with Schumacher
Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher are tied on five Sepang poles each, the most by anyone. One more on Saturday and Hamilton owns it outright. The obstacle is Ferrari's current form — they've slid since Monza, and Hamilton arrives third in the championship but 103 points back.
Verstappen is still winless — and this suits him
Max Verstappen came within two tenths of winning in Baku and remains without a victory in 2026. Sepang is the kind of weekend that has historically gone his way: unfamiliar conditions, limited data, and a strong chance of rain. He's also the circuit's youngest-ever winner, having taken his 2017 victory here the day after his twentieth birthday.
Mercedes brought the upgrade
The W17 is said to be arriving with power unit upgrades, and Sepang's two long straights and heavy braking zones are close to a best-case layout for them. After holding fire in Baku and winning anyway, Mercedes have the luxury of introducing parts from a position of enormous strength — 160 points clear in the constructors' table.
The teammate title fight resumes
Russell's win in Baku cut Antonelli's lead to 66 points with nine rounds left. That's still a commanding margin, but it's the first time all season it has shrunk meaningfully. Two drivers, one garage, one championship — and a circuit where neither has ever raced an F1 car.
The Weather Is A Storyline
Even dry, this is brutal. Track temperatures are forecast above 53°C on Friday and Saturday, with humidity near 86% — the sort of conditions that cook tyres and drain drivers inside a helmet. Pirelli has responded by going a step softer than usual, nominating C2, C3 and C4 to open up the gap between a one-stop and a two-stop.
And a rain percentage at Sepang is a slightly misleading number. Storms here don't drizzle — they arrive, flood the circuit in minutes, and clear. A 30% chance on Sunday is less "it might be damp" and more "there's a one-in-three chance the race gets turned upside down."
The Sepang Record Book
Standings Entering Round 16
LOcO Predicts
LOcO Says
Every so often the calendar hands you a weekend where the form book genuinely doesn't apply, and this is one of them. A circuit nobody on the grid has raced a modern car around. A surface that's been partly relaid since the last visit. Equatorial heat, 86% humidity, and storms that can rewrite a race in four minutes. Add a tyre allocation deliberately chosen to make strategy a real decision rather than a formality.
Mercedes should still be favourites — they're 160 points clear and bringing upgrades to a track that suits them. But Baku showed what happens when the unexpected gets a foothold, and Sepang offers far more places for it to take hold. If Verstappen is ever going to win a race in 2026, it's hard to imagine a better weekend for it than one where nobody's data is worth anything.
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