“ALL CARS ARE LACKING POWER”: HOW DRIVERS SAW FORMULA 1’S FORMATION LAP FIASCO

A software glitch brought Formula 1's formation lap to a standstill before yesterday's Bahrain Grand Prix. Cars across the grid lost power mid-lap — some crawling, others stopping cold. Verstappen flipped a steering wheel switch and recovered; Hamilton's Ferrari took longer to resurrect. Bortoleto's Audi never came back.

Race control red-flagged the start and sent the field to the pits for an FIA software update, burning nearly an hour. The fault spread across power unit manufacturers — Red Bull-Ford, Ferrari, Mercedes — wrecking any theory it was supplier-specific. Hamilton called it: the issue stemmed from circuit-specific power unit settings, the bespoke configurations teams dial in for each track.

Radio confusion reigned. Some engineers thought only Ferrari was hit; Alonso's team suspected Verstappen was gaming the system to help Hadjar after the Red Bull junior spun. Neither was true.

The restart finally went clean, but the chaos cost teams strategy options and raised fresh questions about F1's software fragility under race conditions.