No denying it now – the one reason why F1’s ‘horrible’ start in Malaysia could be a good thing

Where to start after last weekend? Yes, the race we ultimately got was still exciting, but the events that preceded it were perhaps even more telling than anything else that happened on Sunday.

It started with the excitement of something that had been anticipated for months: the first wet race of Formula 1’s new era. On Friday, Pirelli chief engineer Simone Berra had already started laughing when the prospect of a wet race came up. Yes, he would like one to gather data on the full wets and intermediates. But after Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps had miraculously remained dry, he hardly dared hope for anything anymore.

Those experiences were also in the back of my mind when I headed towards the grid at around 2pm local time. ‘It’s race day, so it’ll probably remain dry,’ I thought, as I decided to leave the umbrella in my backpack. After taking two steps onto the starting grid, I already realised that had been the wrong call. The first drops started to fall, and this was not a shower that was simply going to blow over.

Audi’s tent provided some shelter while the drivers headed onto the Sepang International Circuit for their reconnaissance laps on intermediates. Once the cars had reached their grid slots – neatly covered by the tents that had previously kept dozens of journalists and photographers dry – the heavens truly opened.

Then came a huge crack of thunder – which gave both me and my neighbour on the grid, former F1 driver Christian Klien, quite a fright – and we knew enough: the race was not going to start on time.

Delaying wet races often draws significant criticism from fans – and yes, it is extremely rare that we see the full wets in action – but in this case the decision was easy to justify. With the thunderstorm it was too dangerous, there was a lot of standing water and, on top of that, visibility was poor for the helicopter.

The Sepang race start was delayed due to poor weather

Photo by: Srinivasa Krishnan

In fact, it is fair to say that race control got quite a lot right on Sunday. The first delay was unavoidable – OK, perhaps it could have been slightly shorter – and afterwards the decision to have a standing start was exactly what fans wanted to see.

So far, so good. But then came the most embarrassing part of Sunday afternoon. In the media centre, we joked ‘two drops of rain and the 2026 power units are already confused’, but that turned out to be the reality.

Race control’s calls had been good enough to give us a potentially thrilling wet race, but then came the ‘computer says no’ moment. It was chaos reminiscent of the LEGO race, with the difference that the LEGO was supposed to be funny and this robbed F1 of a potentially memorable wet contest.

“We didn't manage to test the software as extensively as we would have liked because there's been very little wet running this year" Nikolas Tombazis

Afterwards, the FIA arranged an additional media session with Nikolas Tombazis, which was commendable and also needed after what fans had just witnessed. The story is well known by now: a software bug caused the electric motors to go into lock-down mode in the slowest parts of the circuit. With no electric power available to offset the turbo lag, nothing happened when the drivers pressed the throttle pedal.

“I didn't even know that the FIA could control our throttle pedal. That was quite scary, actually,” Oliver Bearman said as he looked at us in disbelief at ‘mic 2’ in the media pen.

The two biggest questions after the early chaos in Malaysia

In reality, the FIA was not controlling the throttle pedal – there is plenty wrong with the 2026 rules, but thankfully not that! – although there are two critical points to make about what happened.

The more electrical power units suffered software bugs in the Malaysian rain

Photo by: Bryn Lennon / Formula 1 via Getty Images

The first is that such a software bug only came to light in round 16 of the 2026 world championship. I know that the safety measures for wet conditions have been optimised step by step and also that we had not had a single wet session before this, which led Tombazis to say:

“We didn't manage to test the software as extensively as we would have liked because there's been very little wet running this year. I think if we had had a bit more testing, we probably would have managed to catch it in time and not to have such a situation.”

Although that is true and understandable, the counterargument is that a safety car in the rain is more than likely and that low speeds in certain mini sectors should therefore have been anticipated in the preparations.

Something like this logically does not come to light during the tyre tests that have been carried out – in which a car completes laps at a constant speed – but these are precisely the sort of conditions you encounter in a wet race with a safety car intervention. When I put that to Tombazis, he acknowledged the point, but added that this is simply how software is developed and refined.

“Any bug is a product of a mistake,” he said. “I mean, I don't know of any software that doesn't have bugs and updates. Your computer probably gets updated every three days and those are all bugs. Of course, anticipating these things is what one hopes to do, but sometimes some very combination of events isn't properly anticipated and causes the problem.”

That brings us to the second point and the heart of the matter: the events in Malaysia are further evidence – perhaps the ultimate evidence – that F1 has gone far too far with the current regulations, both in terms of the proportion of electrical power and the extremely complex software that comes with it.

Several drivers, including champion Norris, dislike the 2026 regulations

Photo by: Alex Bierens de Haan / LAT Images via Getty Images

Reigning world champion Lando Norris summed it up: “Just horrible. I don't know, it just proves that we shouldn't have any of that stuff, the electronic side.”

It is short and to the point. Well, saying there should not be any of it may be an exaggeration, but everyone in the paddock will know deep down that F1 has indeed gone too far – even those who sometimes get in touch and perhaps do not appreciate every critical observation in our columns.

Why the events at Sepang could actually be a good wake-up call

But after what happened in Malaysia, there is no denying it. The yo-yo racing can still be debated, and perhaps some sections of the fanbase genuinely enjoy that endless stream of artificial overtakes, but this can no longer be disguised.

Interviews with both the FIA and F1 boss Stefano Domenicali have shown that they themselves know all of this. They know that they need to listen far less to the manufacturers for the next cycle

F1 has spent months using overtaking statistics and data showing how much fans love everything to present the 2026 rules as a good-news story, but cars grinding to a halt without the drivers being able to do anything about it are difficult to sell. It should therefore come as no surprise that these ‘highlights’ are absent from F1’s official Instagram account.

The overtakes we saw behind the safety car are probably the only overtakes this year that have not been used for marketing purposes. And that is surely a missed opportunity, because they really were unique! But all joking aside, perhaps it is actually a good thing that what happened in Malaysia happened. Because now nobody can deny it.

That does not mean we should simply forget about all modern technologies and burn endless amounts of fuel, but it does mean lessons have to be learned from what went wrong with these regulations – something that did not happen this year but years ago: listening too much to the OEMs and, as a result, making far too many concessions over what F1 is actually supposed to be.

F1 opted for a more electrical ruleset due to the direction of the automotive industry, helping to attract OEMs like Audi

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

For me personally, that is not even about the sound. I think the current sound is acceptable. It is about something more fundamental: the fact that, in 2026, drivers are sometimes punished for going faster through a corner. And that goes against everything racing is supposed to be.

Software and algorithms decide too much, the drivers too little. And the start in Malaysia is the best example of it.

The good news is that interviews with both the FIA and F1 boss Stefano Domenicali have shown that they themselves know all of this. They know that they need to listen far less to the manufacturers for the next cycle – and fortunately, the agreement in principle for 2030 or 2031 reflects that mindset.