Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen were unimpressed with the delay to the start of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.
The pair urged Formula 1 to learn lessons from the software problem which struck both their cars during the original formation lap. Both drivers and several of their rivals slowed to a crawl, leading F1 to abandon the attempt to start the race.“It was insane,” said Verstappen. “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, and I saw [Hamilton] crawling.”
“That’s not what you want, right, for the sport,” he added.
Hamilton’s Ferrari came to a complete stop. “I had to stop on track and stop the car and engine and restart it,” he said. “I’ve never done that before.”
“I hope there is a lesson learned,” he added.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Race control summoned the field into the pits and distributed revised software parameters to all the teams in order to address the problem. The problem added almost an hour to the original delay, caused by rain.
“They had to update the software and then you have to load it into the car,” said Hamilton. “I guess some had some faster laptops than others.”
The FIA confirmed it “removed the energy limit constraint in the affected sectors through an updated software release” to address the problem.
“It was just like driving at 35 kilometres, going uphill, actually losing speed,” Verstappen explained. “I don’t know exactly, because 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.
“That’s basically also what I had in the start. But somehow that didn’t trigger in the first software round, and then in the second software round it was a bit better, luckily.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and