Winners and losers from F1's 2026 Bahrain GP in Malaysia
A very strange start was followed by a race full of curveballs in Formula 1's 2026 Bahrain Grand Prix, held in Malaysia.
Here's our pick of the stars and flops.
Winner: Max Verstappen & Red Bull (1st)
A first pole and win of the season for Red Bull, its engine division and the absolute star of today's show, Max Verstappen.
He was almighty at every turn today. He completed a lovely, intricate move at Turns 1-3 around the outside of Kimi Antonelli early on, was absolutely rapid as the track dried, and - after a briefly alarming moment when he stopped late on and lost the lead before the Mercedes followed suit a lap later - held off Antonelli for the win.
While you wouldn't expect to see Isack Hadjar on par with Verstappen, the gap between the two Red Bulls today shows the level at which Verstappen is operating in these scenarios. The car helped, but the driver made the ultimate difference.
And a word for Red Bull Powertrains. Both Audi and Honda (for Aston Martin) have had engine struggles this year. RBPT has produced what is F1's best internal combustion engine at its very first attempt, so that's a big positive for future years as it improves its battery and deployment abilities. - Jack Benyon
Loser: Isack Hadjar (5th)
The obvious loss for Hadjar here is being mugged by both Ferraris on the four-lap shootout after the safety car at the end.
However, look earlier and the problems were already there. He was jumped by Liam Lawson at the start, and after he got that place back he rarely matched team-mate Verstappen's pace. He was as much as three seconds per lap slower at times even when he had a certain amount of clean air.
We're not expecting Verstappen-level performances from Hadjar less than two years into his F1 career, but he looked like he was driving a different brand of car today.
Remember two safety cars reset the field. He was almost 10 seconds behind Verstappen at the lap nine safety car, and 28s behind before the one on lap 42. - JB
Loser: George Russell (classified 20th)
Such a deeply nasty ending to what was already a disappointing-but-manageable weekend.
Even before the 'grand finale' of losing third in the final laps due to a power unit issue, George Russell had suffered a couple of ignominies at Sepang - one was the qualifying defeat to Mercedes team-mate Antonelli (who was limited to one Q3 run), the other was being reeled in and overtaken by Antonelli with what looked like unbefitting ease.
If anything, the late-race issue can almost soothes a little what had come before - because there's nothing you can do. Just wasn't his weekend. Just isn't his year. - Val Khorounzhiy
Winner: Lewis Hamilton (3rd)
Merely changing Lewis Hamilton's tyres to inters at the start may have made him a victory contender, but watching the laptimes during the race I don't think Hamilton had an answer for Verstappen or Antonelli, especially with Hamilton's ill-chosen stint on the poorer mediums, so really I believe this was the best result possible even if Hamilton reckons second was doable.
I think it would be fair to criticise another Ferrari mismanagement of a race though, because the inters were the right choice. It was only a Hamilton masterclass and a bit of luck elsewhere away from barely breaching the points.
Hamilton carved through from 16th to fifth in the second stint after a great call to stay out on his original softs and not switch to new ones under the first safety car.
Then he reduced an 11 second gap to Hadjar down to 3.5s before stopping, struggled on the mediums then nailed a pass on the faster Red Bull shortly after the final safety car when back on his favoured softs. Unbelievable performance.
Team-mate Charles Leclerc had to overcome an extra stop, for the inters early on, but when things were level he took much longer to fight through the pack than Hamilton did. He was about 15s behind before the final safety car, but getting to fourth was still a very nice recovery. One you might celebrate if Hamilton hadn't done what he did. - JB
Loser: Williams (17th & DNF)
In a race where it ran sixth and seventh early on with the correct choice of inters at the start, everything pretty much fell apart for Williams under the first safety car caused by Valtteri Bottas's spin on lap nine.
In the double-stack pitstop which followed for Williams, Alex Albon was the second car and had to wait for his stop, costing him three positions.
Carlos Sainz, in the leading car, was tagged by Gabriel Bortoleto on the restart. A hilarious radio sequence followed where Bortoleto said Sainz left him no room and Sainz said he left all the room in the world. The 10-second penalty for Bortoleto showed the stewards' opinion on it.
That left Sainz struggling to recover from the back, and Albon was well out of reach of the points in 19th when his gearbox later broke. - JB
Winner: Fernando Alonso (8th)
It felt like there was never any doubt, once the restart order had taken shape during the final safety car, that Fernando Alonso would score 'something' for Aston Martin.
He is still the go-to man on the grid when it comes to a situation like that - and the only question was whether he would be able to fend off the McLaren of Lando Norris, which, of course, he was.
It's a big result for Aston Martin (not just because Alonso was over a minute off five laps in due to the starting tyre call), and a big example of the value its star driver brings when you need to simply keep the programme afloat.
Clearly, the AMR26 has improved - but things would sure have looked a lot bleaker in the results table without Alonso's endless opportunism. - VK
Loser: Alpine (13th and 16th)
No intra-team collision this time for Alpine but a “very painful” couple of wrong tyre calls across both cars, which left Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly well outside the top 10.
Gasly explained: “We thought the track could dry a lot quicker. The team was willing to take the gamble, I supported it because, to me, it sort of made sense, and our worst-case scenario was still a lot better than, unfortunately, what the reality was.
“When we went out there, we're losing a huge amount of laptime, and then it's a choice of coming back on your decision or trying to stay out there and make it work. But we tried that and unfortunately it cost us a lot of laptime.
“Then after the virtual safety car, we had the safety car, and everything went the other way; nothing really came our way. We never could capitalise on anything, and it was just very painful.”
Painful because Racing Bulls scooped seven points and extended its advantage over Alpine in their battle for fifth in the championship to 22 points. - Josh Suttill
Winner: Racing Bulls (7th and 10th)
OK, so things didn’t end as well as they started for Racing Bulls, considering Liam Lawson was duelling with Verstappen for the final place on the podium on the opening lap, but Lawson still walked away with the top midfield honours.
That’s despite some frightful formation laps where Lawson didn’t have team radio.
“I knew I had no radio before I even pulled away for the formation lap, so I was very stressed because there's a lot of procedures, especially in this year's car, that you have to do, and I literally was like, no idea what's going on, no idea what mode I was meant to be in,” Lawson explained.
“I had to look at my pit board on the way by to read a certain switch change I had to do, and then it brought the radio back. So, yeah, very stressful.
“That was probably the most alone I've ever felt, and obviously very confusing when all the cars were slowing down, but again, I couldn't talk to the team. I didn't know if I was allowed to overtake or what. Just a lot of confusion.”
Lawson bounced back from that strongly to drive to seventh place with strong pace that made him regret not defending against Oscar Piastri’s McLaren harder.
Team-mate Arvid Lindblad picked up the final point late on by passing Nico Hulkenberg’s Audi. - JS
Loser: Audi (11th and 18th)
The upgraded Audi performed much better at Sepang than it did in Baku, with Bortoleto making it into Q3, but that progress didn’t translate into any points.
Bortoleto misjudged how wet Turn 2 was and went steaming into Sainz’s Williams, picking up damage on his car as well as a 10-second time penalty that ruined any chance of points.
Audi made the wrong call fitting Hulkenberg with slicks at the start, something he admitted was “too ambitious”, but that was quickly rectified with a move back to the intermediates.
It then got the timing right to go back to slicks, but the safety car coming out right after that nullified its advantage from doing so.
“I was eating my steering wheel at that,” was how Hulkenberg described his feelings. “That sucked because I was feeling brave and like a hero in that moment.
“I think we could have undercut a few people, but unfortunately, the safety car had other plans.”
Hulkenberg ultimately ended up finishing 11th - the ninth time an Audi has finished there this season. - JS
Winner: Kimi Antonelli (2nd)
A couple of high-profile errors at Turn 15 made Verstappen's job easier today, but Antonelli's Mercedes wasn't as fast as the Red Bull and the outcome was successfully being best of the rest and extending his points lead.
That's up to 84 now, and while the race was a bit scruffy, it didn't affect the outcome. Team-mate Russell's retirement only adds to the impending feeling that Antonelli is within reach of a first title.
Even if Russell hadn't retired, Antonelli had caught and passed Russell to show he was the quicker and better driver on the day, and even if Russell hadn't retired, it wouldn't change the expectation of where the title's going, he still would have extended his lead. - JB
Loser: Esteban Ocon (15th)
Esteban Ocon has been in strong form lately and he made the most of starting on the correct intermediate tyre for the start to jump well into the top 10 from 17th - all after he'd pulled over to the side on the original formation lap which could have ruined his race.
He made quick work of the two Williams as well, overtaking them on merit in the early running to go as high as sixth in a "mega" stint.
But that was as good as it got as the track dried and the relative pace of the Haas showed. Spirited battles, but faster cars came through and he returned back down to 15th and behind his Haas team-mate Ollie Bearman again. - JB
Loser: McLaren (6th and 9th)
Like Ferrari, McLaren got the tyre call wrong at the start of the race, though it at least partly rectified that on Piastri’s side by bringing him into the pits at the end of formation laps to ditch the slick tyres.
But unlike Ferrari, the McLarens didn’t have the raw pace to make the progress it would have liked, looking fourth best and vulnerable to the midfield.
Norris was caught out by the cars ahead of him braking behind Russell’s stricken Mercedes under safety car, but it looked like an avoidable error.
It was an error that ensured he finished behind Lawson’s Racing Bulls and even Alonso’s Aston Martin Honda.
And the meagre points tally of 10 means Red Bull is now just 18 points adrift of it in the constructors’ championship, and Verstappen now ties Norris in the drivers' points. - JS
