F1 in Bahrain… in Malaysia: The race needed a software update to start

F1巴林大奖赛……在马来西亚：比赛需要软件更新才能开始

Well, it’s safe to say no Bahrain Grand Prix has been affected by torrential rain quite like the 2026 race. For one thing, it was held several thousand miles from Bahrain itself. The ongoing war with Iran ruled such things out, so the Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia stepped in to fill its spot. One of the best examples of a late-’90s “Tilke track”—named for its designer, Herman Tilke—it’s characterized by a couple of long straights and the always-brutal tropical weather that provides one of the toughest physical challenges on the calendar. And this weekend was no exception. Heavy rain arrived about half an hour before the start time, delaying things significantly.

可以肯定地说，没有任何一届巴林大奖赛像2026年的比赛这样受到暴雨的影响。首先，它是在距离巴林几千英里之外举行。由于伊朗持续的战争，巴林无法举办赛事，因此马来西亚雪邦国际赛道介入填补了空缺。作为90年代末“蒂尔克赛道”（以设计师赫尔曼·蒂尔克命名）的最佳典范之一，它以几条长直道和极其残酷的热带天气为特征，这构成了赛历中最严峻的体能挑战之一。这个周末也不例外，比赛开始前半小时左右降下大雨，导致赛事严重延误。

Although the sport has two different kinds of treaded tires for use in the rain, the full wet tire generates so much spray, and such slow lap times, that it’s essentially only useful for circulating behind the safety car. If it’s wet enough to need it, it will be too wet to see where you’re going. The intermediate tire, by contrast, has much shallower grooves and is good for racing on damp but not soaked tracks, although it quickly overheats and degrades as the track dries.

尽管F1拥有两种用于雨天的花纹轮胎，但全雨胎会产生大量水雾，且圈速极慢，实际上只适用于在安全车后行驶。如果赛道湿到需要使用全雨胎，那么能见度通常也低到无法看清前方。相比之下，半雨胎的沟槽较浅，适合在潮湿但未积水的赛道上比赛，尽管随着赛道变干，它会迅速过热并磨损。

Chaos ensues

混乱随之而来

The organizers decided on two formation laps behind the safety car; circulating at lower speed would allow the drivers to get an idea of the track conditions and let their intermediate tires pump some water off the track surface, the idea went. But that didn’t take into account a bug lurking in the cars’ software. Driving slowly behind the safety car with reduced hybrid power in some parts of the track due to the extremely wet conditions convinced several of the cars that they were being tricked into breaking a hard-coded rule meant to prevent cheating, triggering an automatic 60-second shutdown of their electric motors that caused chaos as car after car slowed for the one in front, then took varying lengths of time to reboot their systems.

赛事组织者决定在安全车带领下进行两圈编队圈；原本的想法是，低速行驶可以让车手了解赛道状况，并让半雨胎排开赛道表面的一些积水。但他们没有考虑到赛车软件中潜伏的漏洞。由于极端潮湿的条件，赛车在赛道某些路段以降低的混合动力低速跟随安全车，这导致几辆赛车的系统误以为它们被诱导违反了旨在防止作弊的硬编码规则，从而触发了电动机自动关闭60秒的机制。这引发了混乱，赛车一辆接一辆地因前车减速而被迫减速，随后又花费不同时长重启系统。

“It was like the Lego race,” said Max Verstappen of Red Bull, referring back to the human-size Lego cars that F1 used for a driver parade at the 2025 Miami Grand Prix. “At some point, we were five-wide on the straight because we couldn’t understand what was going on. Then we did a lap and then I see eight other cars crawling still… I mean that’s not what you want, right, for the sport.”

“这就像乐高比赛一样，”红牛车队的马克斯·维斯塔潘说道，他提到了2025年迈阿密大奖赛上F1用于车手巡游的人形乐高赛车。“在某个时刻，我们在直道上五车并排，因为我们搞不懂发生了什么。然后我们跑了一圈，我看到另外八辆车还在爬行……我的意思是，这并不是你想要的，对吧，对于这项运动来说。”

The race organizers aborted the entire start. The bug had never come up in testing, and the FIA had to hastily write and distribute a software update to fix it. An hour after the first aborted start, the cars lined up on the grid again, ready to finally race.

赛事组织者取消了整个起步程序。这个漏洞在测试中从未出现过，国际汽联（FIA）不得不匆忙编写并分发软件更新来修复它。在第一次起步取消一小时后，赛车再次在发车格排好队，准备正式比赛。

“In wet conditions, there are some different software settings for the cars for safety reasons to reduce the power in certain sectors from the maximum to a lower level,” explained Nikolas Tombazis, head of single-seater racing at the FIA. “And this year, we’ve had very little wet weather running or none at all, almost. So it wasn’t maybe adequately checked.”

“在潮湿条件下，出于安全考虑，赛车有一些不同的软件设置，旨在将某些路段的动力从最大值降低到较低水平，”FIA单座赛车主管尼古拉斯·通巴齐斯解释道。“今年我们几乎没有在雨天进行过测试。所以它可能没有得到充分的检查。”

The software was developed by the FIA with the teams and engine makers. “So it’s common software for all cars,” Tombazis said. “And basically there was a combination of events between those software settings and the fact that some cars went incredibly slow during the formation lap and those entered a sort of a bug into the software which was stopping those cars to reaccelerate and to go to normal speeds.”

该软件由FIA与各车队及引擎制造商共同开发。“所以这是所有赛车的通用软件，”通巴齐斯说。“基本上，这是软件设置与某些赛车在编队圈中行驶速度极慢这一事实共同作用的结果，这在软件中触发了一种漏洞，阻止了这些赛车重新加速并恢复到正常速度。”

“And as a result of that, we had quite a few cars affected by that problem and which caused them to stop,” Tombazis said. “Perhaps I should also add that as soon as the formation lap problems happened, we understood the problem very soon afterward and we issued some an updated software to the teams. It took about sort of 20 minutes for the software to be issued. Some explanations teams had to update the software in the car. They had to ask a couple of questions and we had to make sure they all had done that work. So all of that took maybe about 20 minutes or so and so that was what caused that delay for the second start.”

“结果就是，我们有相当多的赛车受到了这个问题的影响，导致它们停了下来，”通巴齐斯说。“也许我还应该补充一点，编队圈问题发生后，我们很快就了解了情况，并向车队发布了更新后的软件。软件发布大约花了20分钟。车队需要对赛车进行软件更新，他们必须询问几个问题，我们也必须确保他们都完成了这项工作。所以这一切大约花了20分钟左右，这就是导致第二次起步延迟的原因。”

More chaos

更多混乱

The delay to the start was long enough that the rain had abated and the puddles of standing water had all drained, leading just over half the grid to gamble that it was dry enough to risk starting on either the soft or medium slick. Only nine drivers opted for the intermediate tire, including Verstappen (on pole), championship leader Kimi Antonelli, and his Mercedes teammate George Russell. Lewis Hamilton, starting second, was among those choosing to start on either the soft or medium slick tire; this was a mistake, as the formation lap proved the track was still much wetter than expected—too wet for slicks, certainly.

起步的延迟时间足够长，雨势已经减弱，积水也已排干，导致超过一半的车手冒险选择使用软胎或中性干胎起步。只有九名车手选择了半雨胎，包括杆位发车的维斯塔潘、积分榜领跑者基米·安东内利以及他的梅赛德斯队友乔治·拉塞尔。排在第二位发车的刘易斯·汉密尔顿选择了软胎或中性干胎，这是一个错误，因为编队圈证明赛道仍然比预期的要湿得多——对于干胎来说肯定太湿了。

So it wasn’t a surprise to see the slick-shod cars quickly left behind as they struggled to put down power on the wet tarmac. Despite being on the intermediates, Verstappen got a terrible start and was left in third, behind both Mercedes. “I was not surprised because my start was horrendous,” Verstappen said. “Again, dropping the clutch and not having power. The engine just completely died on me. But then you just have to settle in, try not to overreact as well, and just slot in, try to keep your position there. The race is long, a lot of things can happen, and step by step, I could close the gap.”

因此，看到使用干胎的赛车在湿滑的沥青路面上难以输出动力并迅速落后，也就不足为奇了。尽管维斯塔潘使用的是半雨胎，但他的起步非常糟糕，落到了第三位，排在两辆梅赛德斯赛车之后。“我并不感到惊讶，因为我的起步太糟糕了，”维斯塔潘说。“又是松开离合器却没动力。引擎直接熄火了。但你必须冷静下来，尽量不要反应过度，找准位置，努力保持住。比赛很长，什么事情都可能发生，我一步步缩小了差距。”

And he did, passing Russell on lap six and then closing up behind Antonelli quickly thereafter. 他确实做到了，在第六圈超越了拉塞尔，随后迅速逼近安东内利身后。