Browse
Log in / Register
Share
SEPANG, Malaysia — October 5, 2025. The FIA has launched a full investigation into the software failure that aborted the start of Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix at Malaysia's Sepang circuit, a bizarre chain of events that left several Formula One cars crawling through the rain before they had completed even one racing lap.
What was supposed to be a routine formation lap after a lengthy downpour turned into a moment of high drama. Drivers reported a sudden loss of electrical power as they approached the final sector, forcing some cars to slow dramatically and others to almost stop. Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time champion now racing for Ferrari, was one of the worst affected: he stopped his car on the circuit and managed to re-start it, something he described afterwards as a career first.
Max Verstappen, who would go on to win the race, summed up the strangeness of the moment by comparing it to a 'Lego race' staged at Silverstone before the British Grand Prix. In his view, the cars behaved less like a field of state-of-the-art machines and more like children's battery-powered toys.
The race start was aborted as a result, and race control sent the field back to the pit lane. It was, by any measure, an embarrassing episode for a championship that depends on finely tuned technology operating without errors.
The FIA's initial statement revealed that the problem was not a mechanical failure but a software logic issue. According to the governing body, "an unprecedented combination of low engine speed, low-grip conditions, wet-weather energy management settings and the Sepang circuit’s sector configuration" led to the loss of power across multiple machines.
That wording may sound technical, but what it means is straightforward: the control systems built into the current power units were already telling the cars to conserve energy because of the wet surface and low speeds. In doing so, they cut off the one resource the drivers needed to accelerate. The result was a grid of cars that stuttered and hesitated like faulty remote-control models.
The governing body's technical department acted quickly once the problem was recognized. During the rain delay, it removed the energy limit constraint in the affected sectors through an updated software release distributed to every team. That adjustment allowed teams to reconfigure their power units before the race got underway for a second time. Without that fix, the restart would almost certainly have produced the same chaotic scenes.
FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis admitted that the situation exposed a blind spot. He told reporters that some cars went very slowly, almost came to a standstill, and said there had been a "concertina effect" between cars. "That bug prevented the power from being redeployed, and for the cars to start again," he said. "I think if we had had a bit more testing, we probably would have managed to catch it in time, and not have such a situation."
Neither the FIA nor the teams had detected the issue during pre-season testing or during the laps to the grid. That detail is hard to ignore. If a bug like this can hide inside the sport's most advanced machinery until a race start is already underway, it raises uncomfortable questions about how much can be learned in dry-weather testing alone.
This is not the first time this season that drivers have expressed frustration with the behavior of the new-generation power units. From the opening round, complaints have focused on the increased electrical component of the systems and the constant need for energy management. The Sepang incident, however, is the first time a software flaw made its way directly into the race start ritual.
The circuit's characteristics helped expose the bug. Sepang is a punishingly hot and humid venue, and when tropical storms hit, the track quickly becomes a low-grip skating rink. The interactions between rain setting, engine speed and the layout of the final sector created conditions that had never been encountered in testing. Normally, a subtle software anomaly might disappear before anyone notices. Here, it brought the entire event to a halt.
For Hamilton, the episode was more than an embarrassment. Stopping on a formation lap to reset the car's electronic systems is not something a professional driver plans for. It is also a vivid illustration of how the current generation of F1 cars can be defeated by their own software.
The FIA says it will carry out a full review together with the teams and power unit manufacturers. The review is expected to focus on the software architecture in the energy recovery system, as well as on the testing procedures that allowed this bug to remain hidden in rainy conditions. The broader question is how much testing the sport can realistically do in wet weather, given the restrictions on track time under the era of budget caps.
Sunday's race itself eventually ran without the same problem. Sepang dried out as the afternoon progressed, and Verstappen converted his early advantage into another win. But the lingering memory of the afternoon will not be overtaking or strategy. It will be the curious sight of multi-million-dollar machines creeping around the circuit as if their batteries were about to expire.
Perhaps the most troubling element is that neither the FIA nor the teams detected the fault during testing or in the laps to the grid. It took a formation lap in difficult weather to expose a bug that had apparently been present in the system all along. Tombazis' admission about testing limitations offers little comfort to a sport that prides itself on accuracy and preparation.
The incident also raises a wider question about how much trust should be placed in software at the highest level of motorsport. Modern F1 cars are as much computers as they are machines. Every throttle input, every brake application, every recovery of energy from the hybrid system is governed by code. When that code functions perfectly, the results are breathtaking. When it fails, the entire field can be reduced to the pace of a mobility scooter.
One thing is certain: the lessons learned at Sepang will be written into development plans long before the next rain-affected race. The FIA's investigation may not find fault with the teams, but it will almost certainly lead to changes in how future wet-weather scenarios are simulated and tested. As Tombazis put it, "Sometimes things fall through the net and people learn, and you do a better job next time."
