FORMULA 1 MUST LEARN LESSONS FROM FORMATION LAP SHAMBLES AT SEPANG – HAMILTON

The Bahrain Grand Prix's formation lap at Sepang descended into chaos when a software glitch slowed both championship leaders and half the field to a crawl. Hamilton's Ferrari stopped dead on track—he had to shut down and restart the entire car, something he'd never done before. Verstappen watched cars go five-wide on the straight as drivers tried to figure out what was happening, some crawling at 35 km/h and losing speed uphill despite full throttle.

Race control scrapped the start, summoned everyone to the pits, and pushed out revised software to all teams—a fix that burned nearly an hour on top of the rain delay already padding the schedule. The FIA stripped out energy limit constraints in the affected sectors. Verstappen's car bogged down twice before the second software load finally cleared it. Both drivers made it clear: F1 needs to get this sorted before it happens again when the lights actually go out.