Bahrain Grand Prix - Hybrid-powered F1 cars struggle to cope after heavy rain....(The Telegraph - 4th Oct 2026).
"The Bahrain Grand Prix descended into chaos on Sunday when Formula One experienced its most farcical scenes for decades because the cars failed to operate in wet conditions in Malaysia.
In a shambolic 90 minutes, the Bahrain Grand Prix (shifting from the Middle East because of the conflict in the region) was delayed by 40 minutes, until most of the standing water had been cleared, only for the most sophisticated cars on the planet to find they were unable to follow a safety car around the Sepang circuit for a couple of laps. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton were among those to encounter problems.
Why would the cars not work?
Modern Formula One cars are increasingly complicated bits of kit. The power units are powered roughly 50-50 between batteries and internal combustion engines, and also have turbos.
Drivers have complained this season of feeling like hostages to the AI underpinning the units, with cars capable of lurching forward as the power kicks in and results being decided by computers either behaving or misbehaving.
In this case – and this was the first wet race of the season, let alone the first wet weather running this weekend – it seemed the cars struggled as a consequence of going so slowly behind the safety car.
“A lot of it comes down to the homework that should have been done before these wet conditions,” Anthony Davidson, a former driver, said on Sky Sports F1. “A lot of it can be simulated. Basically, if you run the engines too slowly, the turbo spools down because we don’t have the MGU-H anymore [the MGU-H is the energy recovery and anti-lag device connected directly to the turbocharger shaft in a Formula 1 hybrid power unit]
“What’s effectively happening is if you are off throttle for too long, the turbo spools down and when the drivers put their foot back down it uses all the engine juice.
“As soon as the battery goes flat, you are down to internal combustion engine power only. And because it can’t reach the drivers’ torque demand anymore, because the engine is not creating the power, because you have no turbo, you go outside of the FIA regulation. It’s all there to stop teams having traction control. It’s incredibly complicated and you fall into this horrible trap where the engine can’t re-accelerate because you are being penalised by this regulation.”
Formula One and the FIA will be accused once again of introducing regulations and machinery which are far too complex. It was not raining that hard. We have now reached a stage where wet weather tyres are redundant. If it’s wet enough to use them, there will not be a race.
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Edited by mab01uk, Today, 01:22 PM.
