Sepang storm threat could hand Verstappen an edge in F1's first wet qualifying of 2026

Sepang is round 16 of the championship, and we have yet to have a full wet session with this generation of F1 cars.

Many teams and drivers have little or no proper experience of running the new cars in the wet. Ferrari and Red Bull are the notable exceptions, having both done Pirelli testing.

Friday stayed dry as the predicted rain never arrived, even though some forecasts had put the chance as high as 90 per cent.

FP3 starts at 12:30pm local time on Saturday, and qualifying follows at 4:00pm local time (9:00am BST). The forecasts for that window do not agree.

Thunderstorms are possible earlier in the day, but the latest local forecast is drier for the afternoon, however, rain is still possible around the wider qualifying window.

In the dry, the margins are tiny. Verstappen set Friday's fastest lap, a 1:37.520 in FP1, just 0.008s quicker than Charles Leclerc's best time from FP2, with the team predicting more. The six fastest drivers were covered by only 0.379s. Mercedes drivers George Russell and Kimi Antonelli finished FP2 in seventh and eighth.

A wet session would make most of that dry-weather picture irrelevant. Verstappen's best wet drive is still recent: he won the rain-hit 2024 São Paulo Grand Prix after starting 17th, a victory widely seen as one of his greatest.

The rain was already on his mind on Friday. He skipped the soft tyres in FP2 and did a long run on mediums instead. He explained: "I wanted to do a long run in case there was some rain coming in."

At Thursday's FIA press conference, Verstappen kept his weather verdict short.

Championship leader Antonelli thinks the circuit is well suited to a first wet test of the 2026 cars because its open surface lets water drain away instead of standing on the track.

Tyres however, are the other unknown. If conditions change suddenly in qualifying, drivers could easily end up on the wrong tyre.

Pirelli's Simone Berra did not rule out the wets and intermediates overheating in Malaysia, and said: "When it rains here, it's quite massive."