Verstappen slams F1's 'LEGO power' after software glitch mars his 72nd victory in Bahrain GP

Max Verstappen claimed his 72nd Formula 1 victory and the first for Red Bull’s in-house powertrain project at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, but the win was overshadowed by a widespread software glitch that left multiple cars crawling on the formation lap at Sepang.

Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton were among the drivers who suffered sudden power loss before the race, triggered by a combination of low engine speed, low grip, and wet-weather energy management systems interacting in an unexpected way. The Red Bull driver used the post-race press conference to take aim at the sport’s increasingly complex engine regulations.

“These engines are so complicated and a lot of software is implemented,” Verstappen said. “I triggered it first and then I looked in my mirror and I just see… I was like, ‘Wait, are they waiting for me or what’s going on?’ It was like the LEGO race. It’s the LEGO power. At some point we were five-wide on the straight because we couldn’t understand what was going on.”

Verstappen described the root cause as an RPM threshold problem. “When you go too low in speed and too low RPM, for whatever reason, then it just bogs down. And normally it takes one or two seconds and it comes back,” he explained. He added that a similar issue had affected his starts earlier in the season, though the situation at Sepang was ultimately less severe than it could have been.

The FIA issued a statement confirming the fault had not been detected during testing or on the laps to the grid. “An unprecedented combination of low engine speed, low-grip conditions, wet-weather energy management systems and the Sepang circuit’s sector configuration led to an unintended loss of power for a number of cars,” the governing body said.

The FIA’s technical department responded during the rain delay by removing the energy limit constraint in the affected sectors through an updated software release distributed to all competitors, allowing teams to adjust their power units before the race got underway.

Despite the pre-race chaos, Verstappen converted the restart into victory, adding another milestone to his career tally while also marking a significant moment for Red Bull’s powertrain ambitions. The win does little, however, to quiet his broader frustration with the direction of F1’s engine architecture — a frustration he made clear he intends to keep voicing.