Verstappen fastest in Q1, Q2 and Q3 for his first pole of 2026 at Sepang
Hamilton starts alongside him, Antonelli moves up to third after Hadjar's grid penalty, and Mercedes struggles with its car in the Malaysian heat
Max Verstappen has his first pole position of the 2026 season. The Red Bull driver was fastest in all three rounds of qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix at Sepang and took pole with a 1:35.130, 0.298 seconds clear of Lewis Hamilton‘s Ferrari. After fifteen rounds in which Mercedes, McLaren and once Alpine shared every pole, pole finally belongs to Red Bull again.
Verstappen was the reference from the first run. He topped Q1 with a 1:36.477, ahead of Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, went quickest in Q2 with a 1:35.696, and then found another half second in Q3. No other driver dipped below 1:35.4.
Fifteen races without a Red Bull pole
The pole lists of this season read like a Mercedes catalogue. George Russell and Kimi Antonelli took eleven of the first fifteen between them, Lando Norris three for McLaren, and Pierre Gasly one for Alpine at Monza. Verstappen arrived in Malaysia sixth in the championship with 163 points and without a Grand Prix win in 2026, according to the official standings.
Sepang suited him from the start of the weekend. He was second in third practice on Saturday morning, behind Antonelli, and RNT tipped him for pole in our weekend prediction on Tuesday.
“When you start first, that’s the target”
Verstappen called his pole “fantastic” after the session. “We’ve been trying many Grands Prix to get pole, sometimes a bit closer than others, but to finally get it from where we started the season, it’s pretty incredible,” he said, as quoted by Formula 1.
He left no doubt about Sunday. “I’m happy with today and for sure I’m going to try to win tomorrow. When you start first, that’s the target.”
Verstappen also pointed to the work behind the result. “We had a tough start to the year, and then I think we really put a lot of good stuff on the car and we really understood, I think, our car a lot better, the behaviour of the car.” A week earlier in Baku he missed out on victory by less than two tenths of a second, Formula 1 noted.
Antonelli inherits third from Hadjar
Isack Hadjar qualified third in the second Red Bull, 0.428 seconds off pole. He will not start there. Hadjar takes his seventh internal combustion engine of the season, where four are allowed, and drops five places on the grid, as Formula 1 reported on Friday.
That moves championship leader Kimi Antonelli up to third. The Italian qualified fourth, 0.501 seconds behind Verstappen, with team mate George Russell only eighth. Leclerc, Norris, Oscar Piastri and Russell complete the top seven on the provisional order, with Hadjar eighth. Arvid Lindblad and Franco Colapinto also have power unit penalties: Lindblad starts from the back, and Colapinto adds ten places to the five he carried over from Baku. The official starting grid follows on Sunday.
Mercedes did not hide its problems. “Very difficult to understand, we have been a little bit caught out on Friday with some car behaviour we didn’t see all year. But you can say it is very hot, and the tarmac is very different to other tracks,” Toto Wolff said, as quoted in Formula 1’s live coverage.
Six out in Q1, Alonso and Sainz in Q2
Nico Hulkenberg, Oliver Bearman, Esteban Ocon, Alexander Albon and both Cadillacs of Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez were eliminated in Q1. Q2 ended the session for Liam Lawson, Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz and Lance Stroll, while Colapinto and Lindblad were classified without a Q2 time. Gasly and Gabriel Bortoleto reached Q3 but finished ninth and tenth, both more than two seconds off pole.
Qualifying top ten
| Pos | Driver | Team | Q3 | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing | 1:35.130 | |
| 2 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 1:35.428 | +0.298 |
| 3 | Isack Hadjar* | Red Bull Racing | 1:35.558 | +0.428 |
| 4 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 1:35.631 | +0.501 |
| 5 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 1:35.666 | +0.536 |
| 6 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 1:35.757 | +0.627 |
| 7 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 1:35.762 | +0.632 |
| 8 | George Russell | Mercedes | 1:35.871 | +0.741 |
| 9 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine | 1:37.210 | +2.080 |
| 10 | Gabriel Bortoleto | Audi | 1:37.673 | +2.543 |
Source: formula1.com qualifying classification. Gap is the gap to pole. *Five-place grid penalty for a seventh ICE of the season.
Our hunch
Pole was the easy part. Mercedes has owned the long runs for most of this year, and Sepang in this heat is a tyre circuit. If the race turns into a two or three stop affair, Antonelli from third is the bigger threat to Verstappen than Hamilton alongside him. Verstappen’s best chance is the first stint: lead into Turn 1, build a gap before the first stop and make Mercedes react. A first win of 2026 is there for him, but he will have to earn it on strategy, not only on pace.
Does Verstappen turn his first pole of the season into his first win, or does Antonelli beat him on strategy? Tell us in the comments.
The race starts on Sunday
Read more about the circuit in our Sepang guide, about why a lap time drops on old tyres in tyre degradation explained, and about the format in how F1 qualifying works. Saturday morning’s session is in our FP3 report.
