Verstappen wins at Sepang as Antonelli pulls further clear

Verstappen had to wait until October for his first Formula One victory of 2026. When it arrived on Sunday, at a Bahrain Grand Prix held in Malaysia, he had to recover from losing the lead at the start and then protect it through another restart near the finish. After 55 laps at Sepang, he crossed the line 2.307 seconds ahead of Kimi Antonelli, giving Red Bull a result they had been approaching without quite securing.

Lewis Hamilton finished third for Ferrari, while George Russell was left with a retirement that made an already difficult championship pursuit more demanding. Antonelli now has 320 points to Russell’s 236, stretching the gap from 66 to 84. There are seven rounds left on the published calendar, and the Mercedes driver nearest to Antonelli has lost another opportunity to bring him closer.

For Verstappen, the weekend offered reassurance before the race began. His first pole of the season put him ahead of Hamilton on the grid, and the win also became the first for Red Bull Ford Powertrains. It gives the team something tangible to show for the work behind its new engine project, alongside the improvements that had brought Verstappen back into contention. Verstappen said afterwards that he was proud of the progress the team had made during the year.

There was little certainty about how Sunday would unfold once heavy rain delayed the start. The first attempt to send the cars away was then suspended after several drivers encountered problems on the formation lap. By the time racing could begin, the changing surface had made tyre choice especially awkward. Verstappen and both Mercedes drivers chose intermediates, while Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were among those prepared to start on slicks.

The Mercedes pair initially had the better of it, with Antonelli and Russell moving ahead of Verstappen into the first corner. The Red Bull driver passed Russell before a Safety Car, brought out when Valtteri Bottas went off, gave the leading cars a chance to change tyres as the circuit dried. Mercedes selected the medium compound and Red Bull the soft. When racing resumed, Verstappen found his way past Antonelli and began to build the advantage that his qualifying performance had suggested was possible.

Antonelli still had work to do behind him. Russell briefly moved ahead before the championship leader recovered second, leaving Mercedes with the prospect of two drivers on the podium even as victory became harder to reach. Antonelli later described second as the best result available to him and acknowledged that the team had struggled more than usual. The points he took away were valuable precisely because this had been a less convincing weekend for the car.

Russell had been running third when his Mercedes stopped late in the race. Toto Wolff identified a power unit failure afterwards, adding that it had not been caused by the Safety Car. The loss was particularly expensive for Russell because he had arrived after winning in Azerbaijan, with the possibility of building on that result. Instead, the margin to his teammate grew by the full 18 points awarded for second place.

Mercedes had brought upgrades to Sepang and hoped for more than it ultimately found. “This has been our worst weekend of the season,” Wolff said in the team’s race report. He acknowledged that Mercedes had fallen short on both speed and reliability and had let Russell down too often. The team’s account of the race noted that the pace on medium tyres had been insufficient to challenge Verstappen, while Russell felt more comfortable after moving to softs. That leaves the engineers with a broader review than the failed power unit alone. They need to understand why a weekend that promised progress produced so little confidence in the car’s speed, with Singapore only days away.

Hamilton’s afternoon developed in the other direction. His early tyre choice cost him places, but he stayed with it as the circuit improved and worked his way back into contention. He eventually passed Isack Hadjar for third after the final restart, with Leclerc also getting through to finish fourth. Ferrari recovered a substantial result from an unpromising beginning, although Hamilton’s description of the podium as bittersweet reflected his feeling that there had been more available.

Hadjar finished fifth, ahead of Oscar Piastri and Liam Lawson, with Fernando Alonso eighth. The classification gave Red Bull two cars in the first five and Ferrari two in the first four, useful returns on an afternoon when getting the opening decision right had not guaranteed a clean run to the finish. Verstappen’s winning margin was modest after the late interruption, but he had done the work required to be the driver setting the pace when the field was released again.

The race’s unusual name remained an important part of the occasion. The agreement announced in July between Formula One, the FIA and the governments of Bahrain and Malaysia preserved an event that the organisers said would otherwise have been lost. It brought the championship back to Sepang for the first time since 2017 while retaining Bahrain’s identity. That arrangement gave this year’s Bahrain race a very different setting, with a result that now belongs to the Gulf event’s history as well as to Malaysia’s return.

The calendar still ends with Qatar, scheduled for November 27 to 29, and Abu Dhabi on December 4 to 6. Before either arrives, Singapore and four rounds in the Americas will give Russell further chances to recover ground. An 84 point deficit leaves him needing a sustained improvement in results, while Antonelli can take encouragement from having increased his lead during a difficult weekend. Sunday gave Verstappen the victory he had been waiting for, while Mercedes left with a more immediate task: giving both of its drivers a car that can reach the finish.