Formula One’s drivers issued a damning condemnation of the sport’s current engine regulations that caused the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia to open with farcical scenes of cars stopping on track and unable to accelerate because of software problems in the electronics that control the engines.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won in Sepang but only after F1 suffered the embarrassment of a host of cars barely able to complete two formation laps in the wet as they were making their way to the grid.
“It was insane,” said the championship leader Kimi Antonelli of Mercedes. “At some point we were five-wide in the straight, because we couldn’t understand what was going on.”
Lewis Hamilton was one of the field who ground to a halt. “I had to stop on-track, stop the car, the engine, and restart it. I’ve never done that before,” he said, while Verstappen reiterated his previous criticism of the engine regulations. “What can you say? It’s not what you want for the sport. I hope there is a lesson learned,” he said.
The issue was caused by software designed to control the engine but which had been insufficiently tested in low-grip, wet conditions which led to what the sport’s governing body the FIA called “an unintended loss of power”. The start had to be aborted and the field returned to the pit lane to have the software updated in a delay that lasted 53 minutes, leading to a chorus of disapproval from the field who already are roundly dissatisfied with the current engine formula.
The defending world champion, Lando Norris, who finished ninth for McLaren and is another driver who has been a vocal critic of the engine regulations, described it as “just horrible” and noted once more that it demonstrated the sport had taken a wrong turn, adding: “We shouldn’t have any of that stuff, the electronic side”.
The formula, an almost 50-50 split between electronic and combustion power, will not be changed this season, with a minor adjustment next year and more serious change in 2028 but the issue had once more raised the question of how the sport reached this point.
“[F1] needs to have a hard look at themselves and see how we ended up in this situation,” said Williams’ Carlos Sainz. “It is clear the regs are extremely complicated for the drivers, for the teams, for the power units, for the manufacturers. It is too complicated. Again, my only question mark is who five years ago decided that this was the direction to go?”
The FIA did act swiftly to rectify the problem with the software update but their single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis admitted the regulations and the “software bug” had caught the governing body out.
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“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 and there was a bit of a combination of circumstances which caused this bug to kick in,” he said.
“Basically, the formation lap, some cars went very slowly, almost came to a standstill. There was a bit of a concertina effect between cars, and some cars almost stopped completely. That bug prevented the power to be redeployed and for the cars to start again. 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.”
