The Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia began in wet conditions, though not at the original start time because visibility was considered to be too poor

Red Bull's Max Verstappen won his first race of the season in a dramatic rain-affected Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.

Kimi Antonelli finished second in the Mercedes and Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton, who fought his way back to the front after an incorrect tyre choice at the start, completed the podium.

Antonelli extended his lead in the championship to 84 points, after team-mate George Russell retired with an engine failure.

This weekend, it's the Singapore Grand Prix - Formula 1's original night race.

Before the race at Marina Bay, BBC F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions.

Do we miss out on exciting wet-weather racing because an overly cautious approach is applied when rain occurs prior to the start of the race? We are watching the best drivers in the world, who have wet tyres, but it seems when it rains prior to the start of a race, the action gets under way too late. - Sam

This question comes up a lot whenever there is a wet race, but in this specific situation the delay in starting the race was not caused by any conservatism when it comes to wet running.

The cars were sent out on formation laps when the track was still pretty wet on Sunday in Malaysia, but then a bug in the wet-weather engine settings provided to the teams by the FIA affected a number of cars, including those of Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton on the front row.

That meant the formation laps had to be aborted, and a new code written and given to the teams to upload to ensure that did not happen again.

It just so happened that in the intervening 25 minutes, there had been no more rain, so the track was pretty dry by the time the race started. Although it has to be said that it took a safety car on lap nine before the drivers who had started on treaded intermediate tyres came in for slicks.

On a generic level, there is no fundamental objection in F1 to racing in the wet - most of the drivers enjoy it. But there is now a collective agreement that they will not race when they can't see where they are going.

So races are not started when that is the case - as it was at the original start time in Malaysia.

But if you cast your mind back to Brazil in 2024, and Verstappen's brilliant drive from 17th on the grid to victory, that was run in wet conditions.

After the Bahrain Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton said that, had he started on the intermediate tyres, he could have won the race. Given the race data and his pace, do you think that's a realistic claim had Ferrari put him on the inters at the start? - Michael

The truth is that Hamilton - and anyone else - will never know, because there was no direct comparison between his pace and Max Verstappen's in similar conditions.

In the first few laps, Hamilton was on slicks and Verstappen on intermediates. When Verstappen switched to slicks, Hamilton's tyres were much older.

On the very few laps when Hamilton was in clear air before he caught Isack Hadjar, his pace when generally nowhere near Verstappen's but then his tyres were nine laps older, so you would not expect it to be.

And then once he finally passed Hadjar, there were only three laps to go.

On one of them, Hamilton was within 0.1secs of Verstappen, on the other two he was 0.5secs and 1.2secs off. But how much were either of them pushing?

What we can say is that Verstappen looked imperious all weekend, and it was probably going to be difficult for anyone to beat him - even Hamilton, who, it's worth saying, on Saturday was not sounding that confident of challenging him.

But it's just a whole load of ifs, buts and maybes, isn't it?

Hamilton's 'pretty incredible comeback' at the Bahrain GP in Malaysia

Malaysia, true to form, brought a great race, chaos and weather. It was sold out. Fans have loved it, missed it, drivers liked the track. We know why it dropped off the calendar but what would it take to come back permanently? - Nick

Malaysia dropped off the calendar because the government there was no longer willing to pay the rights fee, feeling that the expense did not justify the return.

It returned only because the Crown Prince of Bahrain was keen to stage his race, F1 was happy to accommodate him, and he managed to strike a deal with the Malaysian government.

There's no doubt the race was a success. It had a record crowd of 261,000 this year, more than double the previous largest weekend attendance of 126,690, reflecting F1's growth around the world.

If Malaysia was keen on returning to the calendar on a more permanent basis, there is no reason why F1 would not listen to them.

But whether that led to a deal would depend on whether one could be struck that satisfied both parties.

Mercedes better 'watch out - Verstappen 'imperious' in Bahrain GP win

With Red Bull running their own powertrains, what part does Ford play? - John

Max Verstappen's victory in Malaysia on Sunday was not only a landmark because it was Red Bull's first of the season - it was also their first as a power-unit manufacturer.

Red Bull Powertrains was set up specifically to make an engine for the new 2026 regulations, so the team could be in control of their own destiny following Honda's official withdrawal from F1 at the end of 2021.

Ford came on board as a partner early on, and this is much more than simply a badging deal in return for finance/sponsorship money.

Team principal Laurent Mekies said on Monday: "Ford has been with us on this project since pretty much the very beginning.

"They are a key strategic partner for us on these operations. They are helping us on a number of topics.

"Specifically, to give you a few examples, they are manufacturing some of the key elements of the engines.

"So, some of these key elements are manufactured in Milton Keynes (at the Red Bull campus), some of these key elements are manufactured at Ford. And they are a 200,000-people company. And therefore, also in terms of engineering, if and when we need specific support on some topics, we are able to get access to some very good specialists they have.

"Some of these specialists are actually with us in Milton Keynes, and they are able to help us on some specific topics. So it's a mix of manufacturing of key components and some very specific engineering support on some other topics."

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Max Verstappen spoke recently about how much he enjoyed the endurance racing at the Nurburgring. And how he liked "pure" motorsport with the V8 engines and would welcome that or even the V10s back in F1. Is that even possible now? Or has F1 fully embraced the electric/hybrid system, and there is no going back? - Peter

This is a really complex topic, with many conflicting elements to it.

Verstappen - and Fernando Alonso and Lando Norris - has expressed his view this year that to return to "pure" racing, F1 should go back to naturally aspirated engines with no hybrid element.

FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has also been pushing a return to naturally aspirated engines, first V10s early last year, and more recently V8s.

Ben Sulayem has cited the evocative sound of V8s as one his main reasons, as well as lighter cars.

But naturally aspirated engines would use more fuel, so the cars would for half the race or so actually be heavier than they are now. The FIA has even investigated the idea of refuelling returning - which is not popular with the teams.

In F1 these days, only Alonso and Lewis Hamilton survive from the days when the drivers could push flat out throughout a grand prix with no concerns about tyre management.

But occasionally circumstances align to allow that to happen again. And in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, on the low-abrasion Baku circuit in the final stint, it did.

Race winner George Russell said afterwards: "The final stint, I think, is the most amount of fun I've had in a race for as long as I can remember because the tyre felt great. We were pushing flat out every single lap. It was like qualifying one after another.

"You needed to be so alert around this circuit because the walls are so close, especially through the castle. You're threading the needle.

"Those final 10 laps felt really, really fun. And it almost felt like the stories I hear of the drivers in the early-mid 2000s, of when every lap was like a qualifying lap.

"The heart rate is higher, you're pushing the limit every single lap, there's no management. We've had a lot of conversations this year about power-unit energy management, but the tyre management is still there and it has been there for years and years (since Pirelli came in in 2011).

"But just with how the temperatures and the circuit fell out today, with the tyres there was no management, and that was exceptionally fun."

On a romantic level, there is an argument that this is what F1 should be about - drivers pushing themselves and their cars to the absolute limit all the time.

And, it's worth pointing out, tyres are as much of a problem on this front as engines - much more so, in fact, before this year.

Statistics show that the years of refuelling from 1994-2009 had the least amount of on-track overtakes in history.

Then there are the optics of using more fuel at a time when F1 is trying to go net-zero carbon by 2030, even if the racing is a tiny percentage of the sport's overall footprint.

Naturally aspirated engines would also be extremely loud - which would put at risk races such as Miami and Las Vegas close to or in population centres.

And then there's road relevance. The manufacturers are not in F1 for fun. They're in it for marketing reasons. Most road-car engines these days are turbos, and have some degree of hybridisation.

The upshot of all that is that it looks like F1 is heading to a new engine formula - for either 2030 or 2031 - that features V8 turbos with in the region of 15-25% electrical power, mainly to be used as a push-to-pass system.

Bosses are aware of the mistakes with energy starvation that have been caused with the latest rules, and the idea will be to allow the drivers to operate with maximum power all the time, with the electrical elements used to facilitate overtaking.

Send us your question for F1 correspondent Andrew Benson

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