For a while on Sunday afternoon it looked like there might not be a race at all. A thunderstorm sat over Sepang, the start was pushed back by 40 minutes, and when the cars finally went out behind the safety car, some of them wouldn’t go. “I can’t accelerate! It’s not working, guys,” Max Verstappen told his team from pole. Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari rolled to a stop on the start/finish straight with a software problem. Race Control threw the red flag before a single racing lap had been run.

By early evening, Verstappen was standing on the top step for the first time this year, 2.307 seconds clear of Kimi Antonelli. It’s Red Bull’s first win of 2026, a day after the first pole for their new Ford-powered engine, and for a team that has spent most of the season chasing, it was a long time coming. It also keeps a run going that started in 2016: Verstappen has now won at least one race in every season since his second year in Formula 1. It didn’t come easily, either.

The race finally got going at 16:33, 93 minutes late and a lap shorter than planned, and Verstappen lost the lead before he’d reached Turn 1. Off the line the power took a moment to arrive. “It was very hectic,” he said later. “No power, so you have to wait for the power to kick in.” Both Mercedes went straight past him, Antonelli first and George Russell second. Liam Lawson came through to third in the Racing Bull and spent the next few corners side by side with him. Behind them, Ferrari were in trouble. Hamilton and Charles Leclerc had gambled on soft tyres, and on a track that was still wet they fell straight out of the top ten. Leclerc tagged Nico Hülkenberg on the opening lap, broke his front wing, and came in for a new one and intermediates almost immediately. Hamilton stayed out and kept gambling, and dropped as far as 18th. Red Bull had sent Verstappen out on intermediates, and he was sure afterwards that was the call that mattered: “We made the right call with the intermediate tyres, and after that, step by step, we moved our way forward.”

Verstappen was back past Russell into Turn 4 on lap 4, and for a few laps it was a chase. Then, on lap 9, Valtteri Bottas aquaplaned off in the final sector and ended up in the gravel, the safety car came out, and the race turned. Everyone on intermediates came in for slicks, and the drivers who had started on slicks had already lost too much ground for it to help. Mercedes’ stops were perfect, and Antonelli kept the lead.

Verstappen took it back at the restart. He went around the outside of Antonelli into Turn 1 and had the move done by the exit of Turn 2, and Russell used the fight to slip past his teammate into second. A little further back, Gabriel Bortoleto tipped Carlos Sainz into a spin at Turn 2, which cost Sainz a place in the top ten and earned Bortoleto a ten-second penalty.

From there it was Verstappen’s race to manage. He set fastest lap after fastest lap and stretched the gap to five seconds, then eight. Antonelli got back past Russell into Turn 4 on lap 21, then clipped the pit-entry bollard at the final corner and had his team watching his front wing. Russell was the first of the three to make his planned stop, on lap 33, and he didn’t sound convinced about it.

Then, with a dozen laps left, Alex Albon’s Williams stopped out on track with a gearbox problem. Verstappen pitted under the virtual safety car, and a 12-second lead wasn’t quite enough. He came out second, behind Antonelli. Two laps later the full safety car came out so the marshals could move Albon’s car, Mercedes brought both of theirs in, and Verstappen was in front again.

Russell never made it to the restart. He was running third, the safety car was about to come in, and his Mercedes lost power and stopped before Turn 1. All he had for the radio was a long “Ahhh!”. It was a power unit failure. He came to Sepang as the closest thing Antonelli has to a challenger. He leaves with nothing, and his teammate leaves with an 84-point lead and seven races to go.

Afterwards he sounded more worn out than angry. “You’ve almost got to laugh, it’s beyond disappointment,” Russell said. “It’s just so many times this season it’s happened.” Toto Wolff was quick to rule out the obvious suspect. “It’s a power unit failure. It wasn’t caused by the safety car,” he said, before letting the frustration out. “We had such an advantage, one VSC, two safety cars, you couldn’t be more unlucky. I’m so massively annoyed, and not in a happy place.”

Hamilton’s gamble had cost him early, but he hadn’t stopped. By the middle of the race he had worked his way past Arvid Lindblad, Esteban Ocon and Lawson to fifth, and even his rivals could see what was coming. Oscar Piastri, working his own way forward in the McLaren, had a plan for it.

The last safety car gave Hamilton one more chance. Verstappen got away cleanly at the restart, and a lap later Hamilton passed Isack Hadjar into Turn 1 for third, with the crowd on its feet. Leclerc followed him past Hadjar the next time round, at the end of an afternoon that had started with a broken front wing and had him down in 17th at the first safety car. The two Ferraris that were outside the top ten after the first lap finished third and fourth, and Hamilton’s third place was Ferrari’s tenth podium of the season and his sixth.

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur didn’t pretend the result hid the mistake. After the first lap, he said, his cars were “probably in the bottom four”, and he was honest about why. “Honestly, the weather images we had suggested a dry track. I think McLaren and us took that option, while Red Bull and Mercedes made a different decision.” What got them back was pace. “Lewis did a 25 or 27 lap stint at the beginning on softs and he was still really fast. It’s a good recovery, but it’s true that the tyre choice leaves a bit of a bitter taste.”

Hadjar still came home fifth, from eighth on the grid. Oscar Piastri was sixth, Lawson seventh and Fernando Alonso eighth. Lando Norris nearly went into the back of Piastri under braking for Turn 1 behind the final safety car, slid through the gravel and recovered to ninth. Lindblad, who started last after a 30-place penalty for power unit changes, took the last point in tenth, and Red Bull called it a gutsy one.

Ask Verstappen about it and he talks about the people before he talks about the driving.

Antonelli will be fine. He leaves Malaysia 84 points clear with seven races to go, and on another day, with the safety cars falling differently, this one could easily have been his.

Sunday, though, was Verstappen’s. The last time Formula 1 came to Sepang he won it a day after his 20th birthday. He came back at 29 with a car that has spent most of the year playing catch-up, and on Sunday it wouldn’t even pull away on the formation lap. A couple of hours later it had beaten everything on the grid, and he was in parc fermé, grinning, celebrating with the people who had built it, rebuilt it, and waited for a day just like this.