Verstappen and Red Bull avoid first winless year since 2015
During the Dutch media session in Baku, Max Verstappen said Red Bull had “done a great job messing up” its best chance to win a race in 2026. A day later, however, he already came extremely close, and a week on they have finally done it.
Red Bull’s progress with its final upgrade package of the year has not been limited to the Baku City Circuit. In fact, at Sepang, the Verstappen-Red Bull combination proved to be the benchmark for the first time this season.
That was the case during the long runs on Friday, it was the case in qualifying and it was also the case during the race. After a downright embarrassing start to the day for F1 and a highly chaotic opening phase, Verstappen was still able to show his pace.
He managed to pass Russell on intermediates, added an overtake on Antonelli at the restart and then proved to be in a class of his own. Verstappen himself is the first to emphasise that not all of Red Bull’s problems have been solved, but a first winless year since 2015 has at least been avoided.
And in fairness, it certainly did not look that way in China or Japan, when Red Bull had to fight with Alpine and Haas. The turnaround is therefore remarkable after all.
- Ronald Vording
The jury's still out on Mercedes' long-awaited upgrade
Mercedes finally brought its much anticipated aero package, headlined by a redesigned floor, to Malaysia. But if rivals were fearful the Silver Arrows were going to dish out a knockout blow, the jury is still out on just how much better the new-look Mercedes W17 has become.
The form table in Malaysia looked inconclusive because the extremely rough tarmac, making Sepang an outlier on the calendar. Combined with the heat, the conditions induced characteristics from the car which team boss Toto Wolff said were "things we haven't seen all year."
Mercedes is still keeping the faith the upgrade package works as expected, even if it got well beaten by Verstappen at the weekend, with Malaysia predicted to be a one-off. "We still believe that the upgrade works," Wolff said after qualifying. "We just need to understand why not here."
- Fil Cleeren
Russell’s title bid goes up in smoke
A Mercedes driver in an F1 title fight suffering a cruel engine failure in the closing stages of a race at Sepang. Sound familiar?
In 2016 that incident for Lewis Hamilton was a hammer blow to his title hopes against Nico Rosberg. Ten years on and the same can be said for George Russell against team-mate Kimi Antonelli this season.
Russell initially looked set to take advantage of the Sepang chaos by overtaking Antonelli for second place in the opening laps, but he did not have the pace to pull away and the Italian came back at him to regain second place and the lead Mercedes driver on the road.
When Alex Albon’s Williams gave up the ghost with 10 laps to go, a late safety car restart appeared to give Russell another opportunity to fight back against Antonelli. But just as the pack began to line up for the restart, the British driver’s Mercedes came to a halt just before Turn 1 and his race was run.
All Russell could do was watch Antonelli bag another healthy haul of points, even if he didn’t beat Max Verstappen to victory, and extend his championship lead to an almost impossible gap of 84 points for his team-mate to bridge over the final rounds of the season.
- Haydn Cobb
Alonso caps Aston Martin's best weekend of 2026 with a top-10 finish
Points finishes are a rarity for Aston Martin in Formula 1 these days, so Fernando Alonso taking eight at Sepang is noteworthy in itself. More encouraging, though, was that the result was not simply a stroke of luck.
The Silverstone team had already shown respectable pace in Saturday's qualifying, getting both cars into Q2 for the first time this season. Even Lance Stroll, usually a man of few words when speaking to the media, sounded somewhat upbeat as he described it as "our most competitive event" of 2026.
Once the early chaos had settled, both Alonso and Stroll showed solid race pace. The Spanish two-time world champion ultimately converted that into 10th place on merit and later into eighth, while his Canadian team-mate crossed the line in 12th.
It was only the third time an Aston Martin had finished in the points this year, with Alonso delivering on each occasion, but arguably the most deserved. It will not change the course of the team's season, but it is something to build on for an outfit that has suffered more than any other under the new regulations for 2026.
- Federico Faturos
F1 needs to be humble and honest over formation lap chaos
F1 bosses have been adamant ‘all is well and nothing to see here’ with the new-for-2026 regulations, a mantra it has not needed to use for a while as the teething issues have been smoothed out over the first two-thirds of the year.
But the prospect of the first wet race of the new era exposed fresh headaches.
It was not to do with the initial decision to delay the start by 40 minutes due to the rain deluge that hit the track during the national anthems, which was entirely appropriate on safety grounds.
However, multiple cars suffering suspected software glitches during the two formation laps in the wet caused chaos, with the whole thing needing to be red-flagged, with a farcical scene of the safety car coming into the pitlane in the middle of the pack.
Rewind back to January, a behind closed doors test in Barcelona – which included a day of wet running – was meant to iron out these issues away from the public spotlight. So the question is, what were they all doing that day?
Instead, issues more familiar with a shakedown test where exposed on a formation lap of the 16th grand prix of the season. Serious questions need to be asked of how this happened and how it can be solved. Fans were denied a proper wet-to-dry race with the entire grid back on slicks after 14 laps due to the extended delays between the red flag and proper race start.
It is time for F1 to accept there were failings that could have been avoided and learn from this incident without the ‘everything is great’ insistence it has held all year.
- Haydn Cobb
