F1 Bahrain GP in Malaysia: Follow FP1 at Sepang with live timing

Hadjar graphically demonstrates the low-grip status of the track at the moment with a queasy moment of understeer at the final hairpin.

On-board shots from F1 TV reminding us how much combined steering and braking/acceleration goes on at this track, which is also tough on tyres. Check out Turn 9 as well: a sharp-ish left-hander which goes slightly uphill. This is quite a big traction zone where it's very easy to spin up the rear tyres.

Antonelli pops in a 1m40.137s first time out, but soft-shod Verstappen usurps him from the top of the timesheet with a 1m39.400s. 

Mediums appear to the tyre of choice for now, the outliers being Colapinto, Lindblad, Hadjar and Verstappen on softs. Russell now out on track too.

Psst! Want to see the new Mercedes upgrade package? Of course you do.

On the positive side, we could be in for more strategic variation owing to the highly abrasive track surface which Oscar Piastri likened to "sandpaper". The chunky, open aggregate drains relatively well in wet conditions and dries quickly, but it causes the tyres to overheat and degrade rapidly.

A welcome relief after an Azerbaijan GP that was a nailed-on one-stop race on the softest tyre compound available.

Well the engines are firing up in the garages so we're not far away from the first business of the day beginning.

It'll be interesting to see how the 2026 cars perform around this track. Pre-weekend simulations indicate that the track's layout militates against using electrical deployment in the second sector because the cars need all the juice they've got over the three big straights: one at the end of the lap, the start-finish, and then again after the Turn-1-2 complex.

Sepang held its maiden grand prix in 1999. This was the year Michael Schumacher broke his leg in a crash at Silverstone and sat out the next six races while Mika Salo filled in for him. Team-mate Eddie Irvine became an unlikely championship challenger to McLaren's Mika Hakkinen...

Malaysia was the penultimate round and Michael was pressed into service again as number two to Irvine. Urban legend has it that Michael had very little interest in doing this so he kept telling Ferrari his leg hasn't healed yet... until Luca di Montezemolo telephoned his house, Michael's daughter answered it, and said "Daddy's out playing football". Whoops!

In the race, Irvine led a Ferrari 1-2 but the cars were then disqualified when their bargeboards were found to be illegal. Mika Hakkinen was the champion!

Then the results were reinstated on appeal, via the argument that if you measured the bargeboards from a certain angle they were legal. Mika Hakkinen wasn't the champion! Until Suzuka anyway.

Photo by: Getty Images

Sepang, of course, was the first waypoint of Formula 1's massive global expansion via government-backed GPs with flashy new tracks and statement architecture.

Photo by: Getty Images

Something you didn't see much of in the past here at Sepang was the fans – because tickets were ridiculously expensive and very few people in the locality had any interest in F1. That, of course, has changed post-Drive To Survive...

Fan waves Malaysian flag

Photo by: Colin McMaster / LAT Images via Getty Images

Let's get you caught up with matters of moment from the past couple of days.

GOOD MORNING SEPANG

And a very warm welcome to those of you in westward timezones who can still taste the toothpaste. F1 returns to Malaysia this weekend for the first time since 2017, as the Sepang circuit hosts the Bahrain Grand Prix.

We could be in for our first properly wet track sessions of the weekend given the tropical climate - it has a predisposition to downpours at bout 4 o'clock in the afternoon, a fact which seems to have been lost on those who scheduled a 3pm race start.

And let's all join hands and hope our man Ronald Vording can stay awake today after his late finish and two-hour door-to-door journey from media centre to hotel. #PrayForRonald