Going Off Track with Kathryn & Emily
Oct 5, 2026 · 25 min · 9 segments
In 2017, Max Verstappen celebrated his birthday winning the Malaysian Grand Prix. In 2026, Max Verstappen celebrated his birthday winning the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.Time is a flat circle.In…
Now, let's talk about how we started the race, which for me, of course, was at midnight the night before.
I have work to do.
I had a volleyball match this afternoon.
And so of course there is an hour and 40 minute delay, of which we spent most of that time sitting there watching the track dry, which is so much fun, isn't it? So much fun that we are starting this episode off by me reading a statement released this morning by the FIA.
This morning, if, at 5:00 AM this morning.
Who needs sleep, I guess? But the statement reads, and I'll put it up on the screen, "On the formation lap ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, an unprecedented combination of low engine speed, low grip conditions, wet weather energy management settings, and the Sepang circuit's sector configuration led to an unintended loss of power for a number of cars.
As a result, the FIA technical department removed the energy limit constraint in the affected sectors through an updated software release distributed to all competitors during the race delay caused by heavy rain, enabling teams to make the necessary changes to the power unit before the start of the race.
This issue had not been detected by the FIA or the teams during testing or during the laps to the grid.
The FIA, together with the teams and power unit manufacturers, will undertake a full review of the issue." And basically that means that they didn't know that this was going to be a problem.
But as we got a more detailed explanation from Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA single seater director, what happened was that we saw on track was that when cars were driving too slowly, this software issue prevented power from being redeployed so that the cars could start going faster again because the cars were going slower than the car computer system expected them to go.
They were going so slowly, why? I don't know, because maybe there was a river where the track should have been, and they maybe needed like paddle boats instead of cars.
And this was the first time any of the teams and cars this season had needed to drive that slowly around the track in order to safely make it to where they were attempting to go, which was the grid, to attempt some sort of start to this race, which at the time would have been a very boring rolling start, which fortunately for that delay, it was not.
They have the best of the best, and they also have access to the most information and data and everything possible.
They should have the resources to, A, know what all of the potential conditions are supposed to be in any iteration.
They should have some computers that could be dedicated to figuring that out.
And B, test them adequately prior to the race already technically having been started in the sense of the, the cars coming onto the grid for a formation attempt.
So full credit to all of the probably overworked and underpaid software guys who were able to patch that bug and deploy the fix in what actually was only a 20 minute-- That whole thing, from fixing the bug to distributing it to the teams to updating the power units, took about 20 minutes according to the single seater director.
That still doesn't explain the other hour of waiting plus the other 20 minutes of waiting.
That leads to an hour and 40 minutes because math is hard.
But it is good that they were able to fix that issue so quickly.
Now, let's talk about how we started the race, which for me, of course, was at midnight the night before.
I have work to do.
I had a volleyball match this afternoon.
And so of course there is an hour and 40 minute delay, of which we spent most of that time sitting there watching the track dry, which is so much fun, isn't it? So much fun that we are starting this episode off by me reading a statement released this morning by the FIA.
This morning, if, at 5:00 AM this morning.
Who needs sleep, I guess? But the statement reads, and I'll put it up on the screen, "On the formation lap ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, an unprecedented combination of low engine speed, low grip conditions, wet weather energy management settings, and the Sepang circuit's sector configuration led to an unintended loss of power for a number of cars.
As a result, the FIA technical department removed the energy limit constraint in the affected sectors through an updated software release distributed to all competitors during the race delay caused by heavy rain, enabling teams to make the necessary changes to the power unit before the start of the race.
This issue had not been detected by the FIA or the teams during testing or during the laps to the grid.
The FIA, together with the teams and power unit manufacturers, will undertake a full review of the issue." And basically that means that they didn't know that this was going to be a problem.
But as we got a more detailed explanation from Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA single seater director, what happened was that we saw on track was that when cars were driving too slowly, this software issue prevented power from being redeployed so that the cars could start going faster again because the cars were going slower than the car computer system expected them to go.
They were going so slowly, why? I don't know, because maybe there was a river where the track should have been, and they maybe needed like paddle boats instead of cars.
And this was the first time any of the teams and cars this season had needed to drive that slowly around the track in order to safely make it to where they were attempting to go, which was the grid, to attempt some sort of start to this race, which at the time would have been a very boring rolling start, which fortunately for that delay, it was not.
They have the best of the best, and they also have access to the most information and data and everything possible.
They should have the resources to, A, know what all of the potential conditions are supposed to be in any iteration.
They should have some computers that could be dedicated to figuring that out.
And B, test them adequately prior to the race already technically having been started in the sense of the, the cars coming onto the grid for a formation attempt.
So full credit to all of the probably overworked and underpaid software guys who were able to patch that bug and deploy the fix in what actually was only a 20 minute-- That whole thing, from fixing the bug to distributing it to the teams to updating the power units, took about 20 minutes according to the single seater director.
That still doesn't explain the other hour of waiting plus the other 20 minutes of waiting.
That leads to an hour and 40 minutes because math is hard.
But it is good that they were able to fix that issue so quickly.
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