When Formula 1 last raced at Sepang, on 1 October 2017, Max Verstappen had turned 20 the day before and won by almost 13 seconds. Kimi Antonelli, who arrives this week leading the world championship, was 11. Malaysia had already decided that would be the last one. Ticket sales had been falling for years and the hosting fee kept rising, so the government ended its contract a year early. Formula 1’s own statement that April called Malaysia’s fans some of the sport’s most passionate supporters, and for nine years they had MotoGP and endurance racing at Sepang instead.

It comes back in about the strangest way a Grand Prix can. The war in the Middle East took Bahrain and Saudi Arabia off the calendar in March, and by the summer the effort to save one of them had settled on Bahrain. On 26 July, Formula 1 and the FIA confirmed that the Bahrain Grand Prix would be held at Sepang between Baku and Singapore, name and all. Bahrain’s circuit is selling the tickets, the race keeps its Bahraini title sponsor, and a new direct flight from Bahrain to Kuala Lumpur starts on 29 September, five days before the race.

Malaysians did not need persuading. Three-day passes went on sale on 13 August, and by the next day most had gone, with the ticketing site struggling under the traffic. The cheapest ticket is RM200 for the G Hillstand, a grass bank with no seats that is sold only to holders of a Malaysian identity card. The country has had one Formula 1 driver, Alex Yoong, and his only home race, for Minardi in 2002, ended in retirement.

The circuit they are coming back to has hardly been touched. Sepang has not been resurfaced since 2017, and nine years of tropical weather have left the asphalt abrasive. Pirelli has brought the middle of its range, the C2, C3 and C4, rather than its hardest compounds, so that a one-stop and a two-stop race finish close enough in time that teams will have to make a real choice. Nobody has current data. Pirelli is working from 2017, the first year of the wider tyres, because the balance between car and tyre then is the closest match to what the teams run now.

Most of the grid will be learning the place on Friday. Ten of the twenty-two drivers have started a Grand Prix here: Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Max Verstappen, Sergio Pérez, Nico Hülkenberg, Valtteri Bottas, Esteban Ocon, Carlos Sainz, Lance Stroll and Pierre Gasly. Gasly made his Formula 1 debut at Sepang in 2017, called up by Toro Rosso five days before the race, and finished 14th with a seat that kept moving under him all afternoon. Charles Leclerc drove first practice for Sauber that weekend and has not been back since. Neither of the two drivers fighting for the title has raced here in Formula 1.

So the championship arrives on a level it has not been on all year. Antonelli leads George Russell by 66 points after Russell’s grand slam in Baku, with eight rounds left and 208 points still available. Mercedes have won 11 of the 15 races so far, and both of their drivers will be finding the braking points at Sepang alongside the rookies.

The drivers who do know Sepang know it well. Alonso has won here three times for three different teams: Renault in 2005, McLaren in 2007 and Ferrari in 2012, when he started eighth in the rain and held off Pérez, who finished second for Sauber. Hamilton won in 2014 and took the last pole here in 2017, a 1:30.076 that still stands as the Sepang pole record. Verstappen turns 29 on Wednesday. He has not raced at Sepang since the day after his 20th birthday.

And then there is the weather, which has settled more races at Sepang than any strategy has. Early October falls in Malaysia’s inter-monsoon season, when afternoons often end in a thunderstorm, and Sunday’s race starts at three o’clock local time. In 2009 the start was pushed back to five to suit European television. The storm arrived with the light already going, the race was stopped short of three-quarters distance, and only half points were awarded, one of a handful of times that has happened in the world championship.

First practice starts at 12:30 local time on Friday, nine years and one day after the last Formula 1 race at Sepang. The fans on the grass of the G Hillstand have waited through every one of those days. And if Sepang is still Sepang, by mid-afternoon the clouds will be gathering over the Strait of Malacca, the way they always did.