Why F1's computers keep crashing

Two weekends, two red faces. At Sepang, a bug in the FIA's own wet-weather software left the two multiple world champions on the front row crawling behind the safety car. Five days later in Singapore, a pop-up window on a race control computer went unanswered and part of the field lost its power boost in qualifying. Neither was a freak. This is what happens when a racing car becomes a software project and the referee writes some of the code.

Sepang: stuck at 20km/h

The Bahrain Grand Prix, held at Sepang this year, was the first wet race of the new era. After a 40-minute delay for a downpour, the field set off behind the safety car. Max Verstappen, on pole, reported he could not accelerate. Lewis Hamilton stopped. "I had to stop on track and stop the car and engine and restart it. I've never done that before," he said. Charles Leclerc hit the same wall when he tried to go. "We were stuck at like 20 km/h. It's a little bit scary to see that on a Formula 1 car."

The culprit was the wet-weather mode, which trims electrical power from 350kW to 250kW in parts of the track when it rains. The FIA's review found that cars at low engine revs in those sectors suffered "a loss of power beyond the original intent" that they could not recover. With no electric power to cover the turbo lag, Autosport explained, the throttle did nothing. Oliver Bearman was stunned: "I didn't even know that the FIA could control our throttle pedal. That was quite scary, actually."

Out came the red flag. The FIA wrote a patch, the teams loaded it on to all 22 cars, and the race started about an hour and a half late. The fix simply lifted the 250kW restriction in the mini-sectors where the bug had struck. Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA's single-seater director, called it "obviously a rush job" and admitted "clearly, we didn't test the updates". He was honest about the limits, too. "Can I guarantee it will never happen again? This specific problem, yes. A problem, no."

The FIA's follow-up review said the software had been simulated by teams and engine makers and run in first practice at the Belgian and Dutch Grands Prix, at normal speeds rather than a safety-car crawl, as Autosport pointed out. A further wet-weather update is due for Austin on 25 October, and the FIA has promised stronger testing "through independent assessment and collaborative feedback".

There is an irony here. The reduced wet-weather deployment was itself one of the changes agreed in April, after concerns about incidents in damp conditions. A patch broke on top of a patch.

Singapore: the pop-up nobody clicked

Sepang was a bug. Singapore was a person. When sprint qualifying restarted after Sergio Perez's crash red-flagged SQ1, race control failed to re-enable Overtake Mode, which is normally active throughout qualifying and worth an extra half-megajoule of energy. When someone noticed, it was switched on for 27 seconds, then off again.

"Normally it is a manual process to re-enable it, because clearly when it gets re-enabled we want to make sure from a safety point of view it's okay to do so," Tombazis told Sky Germany. "Unfortunately, there was a pop-up window that came on somebody's computer that was not acted on quickly enough or when it should have." He called it "a bit of a mess, quite frankly", and an unfair result "probably, in some ways, the worst thing" for the FIA.

Arvid Lindblad, Lance Stroll and both Williams drivers went out. According to Autosport, Williams asked for all 22 cars to go through to SQ2, but the stewards were unsure they had the power to allow it, and a rerun was impossible because teams lacked tyres. Carlos Sainz, slowest of all, was scathing: "Half of the cars did the lap with half a second quicker engine than the others." And that was not the only glitch of the weekend.

Sources: Autosport, RacingNews365, The Race. The timing system is run by Formula One Management, not the FIA.

The battery problem nobody can patch

Drivers have been wrestling with energy management all year. On his Red Bull debut in Melbourne, Isack Hadjar made a superb getaway despite starting "with no battery for the launch", and just as he thought he was taking the lead there was "no more power". At Sepang he lost a podium late on. "Just the last couple of laps, I don't know how we ended up having no battery," he said. "So in the straight, I couldn't defend against the Ferraris, so we lost the podium on something so stupid."

Even winners suffer. Verstappen took Singapore despite "a few laps with some deployment issues" that let Leclerc close in. Fernando Alonso, whose gripe was with his Honda's deployment rather than the FIA, said in an untelevised radio message: "Haha. Energy. It's so ridiculous this engine." Leclerc's line after Sepang sums it up: "You are not completely in control of the power you are given."

Red Bull's Laurent Mekies called Sepang "a good reminder for all of us that we should probably make sure that complexity doesn't get out of hand". Sainz, a director of the drivers' association, went further: "But clearly what was decided four or five years ago was wrong."

What F1 should do

Tombazis is right that all software has bugs. That is the problem. How much power 22 cars have at any moment now depends on FIA-supplied code, a standard ECU and, as Singapore showed, a person in race control clicking the right box. Each layer was added to fix the one below it. The V8s are not due until 2030, and these fixes cannot wait that long.

Our verdictFirst, race control's power switches need the discipline of a pit stop: a checklist, a second person to confirm, and an alarm that keeps sounding until the job is done, not a pop-up that can be missed. Second, every FIA software update should be run through the ugly cases, safety-car crawls, restarts and rain, before it goes near a grand prix. Third, F1 needs a written remedy for when the governing body's own error skews a session, so stewards are not left improvising as they were in Singapore. Bold call: Austin's wet-weather update will not be the last emergency patch of 2026.

Sources: Autosport, how the FIA software bug caused chaos, FIA explains the glitch, race report, FIA investigation, human error in sprint qualifying, teams furious and Tombazis on the "mess"; BBC Sport, 'Lego race' reaction and Sainz and Mekies; RacingNews365, why the bug was missed, FIA review findings and Leclerc; Crash.net, Sainz on sprint qualifying; The Race, Hülkenberg's timing reprieve; Formula1.com, Hadjar at Sepang; Motorsport.com, Hadjar in Melbourne; F1Technical, Verstappen on deployment; PlanetF1, Alonso's radio; Motor Sport, the April rule changes. Facts as reported up to 13 October 2026; opinions are ours. See all headlines on the wire →