One of the strangest entries in Formula 1 calendar history. The Bahrain Grand Prix could not be run in Bahrain in 2026 — so it has been moved 6,500 kilometres east to Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia, keeping its original name. For fans it means something else entirely: F1 is racing at Sepang again for the first time since 2017.
The short version: the race name stayed, the country changed. Here is how that happened.
The 2026 Bahrain Grand Prix was originally scheduled for 10–12 April at the Bahrain International Circuit. When conflict broke out across the Middle East at the end of February, Formula 1 and the FIA cancelled both the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian rounds on safety grounds, cutting the season from 24 races to 22. Saudi Arabia stayed off the calendar. Bahrain’s round did not — it was reinstated at a different address, bringing the 2026 season back up to 23 Grands Prix.
The event is still officially the Bahrain Grand Prix — a deal between Formula 1, the FIA, the Bahraini government and the Malaysian government keeps Bahrain as the promoter and funder of the race, while Sepang provides the venue. That is unusual but not unprecedented in motorsport: a Grand Prix takes its name from its title-holder, not necessarily from the ground it is run on. For 2026 only, the Bahrain Grand Prix is a race held on the other side of the Indian Ocean.
Sepang was one of very few circuits on earth able to take a full Formula 1 weekend at short notice. It is an FIA Grade 1 facility built specifically for F1, it still hosts world-championship motorcycle racing every year, and its garages, medical centre and paddock are already sized for a Grand Prix. Malaysia gets a race it walked away from in 2017 without having to pay the hosting fee that made it walk away in the first place — a one-off arrangement that suited everyone.
Slotting the race into early October created one of the toughest stretches of the season: Baku in Azerbaijan on 24–26 September, Sepang on 2–4 October, then the Singapore night race on 9–11 October. Three races on three consecutive weekends, across three time zones, two of them in tropical heat. Team personnel fly directly between them, and by the Singapore Sunday the paddock will have been on the road for the best part of a month.
Everything you need to follow the weekend — start here.
A standard three-practice weekend — no Sprint. Every session time in Malaysian time plus UK and US conversions, and what actually happens in each one.
Nineteen Malaysian Grands Prix from 1999 to 2017 — every winner, the monsoon classics, “Multi 21,” and why the race disappeared for nine years.
Never watched Formula 1 before? The hub page explains how the championship works, who the teams are, and how a race weekend unfolds — in plain English.
Sepang sits a few degrees north of the equator. Track temperatures push past 50°C and the humidity rarely drops below 70% — drivers can lose several kilograms of body weight in a single race.
October falls in Malaysia’s inter-monsoon period, and tropical downpours arrive most often in the afternoon — exactly when the race runs. Sepang has produced some of the wettest Grands Prix in modern F1.
This is Round 16 of 23. Seven races remain after the chequered flag falls at Sepang, which makes it one of the last points in the season where a title deficit can still be turned around.
Six things that make this circuit different from anywhere else on the calendar.
Sepang opened in 1999 as the first purpose-built Formula 1 venue in Asia and the first major circuit designed by Hermann Tilke, the architect who would go on to shape most of the tracks built since. Long straights feeding into heavy braking zones, generous run-off, and a mix of slow, medium and fast corners — the template that defines the modern calendar started here.
The track is between 16 and 22 metres wide — far wider than most circuits, and wider still at the corner entries. That width is why drivers love it: there is genuine room to try an unusual line, to defend without weaving, and to run two or even three abreast into a braking zone. Overtaking here is a real skill contest rather than a straight-line formality.
Sepang’s signature feature is a pair of long straights running back-to-back down either side of the paddock, joined at the far end by a tight hairpin. Cars reach the end of one straight, brake hard, turn almost 180 degrees, and immediately accelerate down the next. It gives two clean overtaking opportunities within a few hundred metres and makes slipstreaming decisive.
Sepang is consistently rated among the two or three most physically punishing races of the year. Ambient temperatures above 30°C combine with humidity that can exceed 80%, and cockpit temperatures climb far higher. Cooling is a genuine engineering problem — teams cut extra openings into bodywork here that they would never use in Europe, sacrificing aerodynamic efficiency simply to keep the power unit alive.
Abrasive asphalt, high track temperatures and a series of long, loaded corners make Sepang one of the highest tyre-degradation circuits in the sport. Strategy is rarely a one-stop formality here: teams have to balance the pace gained by pushing against tyres that fall away quickly, and the correct number of pit stops is often still being argued over on the pit wall at half distance.
Tropical rain at Sepang does not drizzle — it arrives as a wall of water, often within minutes of a clear sky, and can drop more rain in twenty minutes than a British summer month. Races here have been red-flagged, half-pointed and completely upended by weather. Any Sepang forecast should be read as a suggestion rather than a plan.
A conventional weekend — three practice sessions, one qualifying, one race. All times Malaysian time (MYT, UTC+8).
Round 16 of 23 — the point in the season where the arithmetic starts to bite.
Kimi Antonelli led the drivers’ standings at the August summer break, with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell heading the chase and Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris, Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri all still mathematically alive. With a maximum of 25 points on offer per Grand Prix and seven rounds remaining after Sepang, a single retirement in tropical heat can be worth more than several good weekends. Check the live standings before lights out — this table moves fast.
2026 brought the biggest technical rule change in a generation — new power units with a far greater share of electrical energy, active aerodynamics and lighter cars. No team has ever run this generation of car at Sepang, and no simulation model has real Sepang data to check itself against. Whoever reads the circuit fastest on Friday morning may find an advantage that has nothing to do with their form at the previous round.
When Max Verstappen won the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix, everyone in the paddock understood it was goodbye. Malaysia had decided the hosting fee was no longer worth paying, and Sepang — a circuit drivers consistently named among their favourites — dropped off the calendar after 19 races. It kept running world-championship motorcycle racing and endurance events, but Formula 1 never came back. That it returns in 2026 under another country’s name, as a stand-in for a race 6,500 kilometres away, is one of the odder routes back onto the calendar any circuit has taken — and it does not make the racing any less welcome.