A conventional Grand Prix weekend at Sepang — three practice sessions, one qualifying, one race. Here is when everything runs, and what each session is actually for.
Six rounds in 2026 use the Sprint format, with two races in one weekend. Sepang is not one of them — and given that no team has raced a current-generation car here, that is just as well. The traditional format gives everyone three full practice sessions to learn a circuit Formula 1 has not visited since 2017 before anything starts to count. Friday is for data, Saturday afternoon sets the grid, and Sunday is the Grand Prix.
Sepang runs on Malaysia Time (MYT) — UTC+8, with no daylight saving. The 15:00 MYT race start equals 08:00 BST (UK) / 09:00 CEST (Central Europe) / 03:00 ET / 00:00 PT (US West Coast) / 17:00 AEST (Sydney). One curiosity worth noting: in Bahrain, whose name the race carries, lights out falls at 10:00 in the morning. For North American viewers this is one of the earliest starts of the season — the practice sessions land in the small hours, so a recording is the sane option. F1 is broadcast globally through the official Formula 1 broadcast partners; check your regional provider for channel and streaming details.
Early October sits in Malaysia’s inter-monsoon transition, when convective storms build through the day and break in the afternoon — which is exactly when qualifying and the race are scheduled. Sepang rain is dramatic rather than persistent: the track can go from bone dry to undrivable in five minutes and back to a dry line half an hour later. Watch for teams gambling on intermediates before the rain properly arrives, and for the race director’s Safety Car and red-flag calls — the 2009 race here was stopped for good after 31 laps and awarded half points.
Sepang is the middle race of three on consecutive weekends: Azerbaijan in Baku on 24–26 September, Malaysia on 2–4 October, then Singapore on 9–11 October. Cars, garages and several hundred tonnes of freight move directly from one to the next, and teams run reduced crews on rotation to keep people inside their permitted rest periods. Reliability problems that would normally be fixed at the factory have to be solved in the garage, which historically makes the middle race of a triple-header a good bet for unusual retirements.
Session times reflect the timetable published for the relocated round and are subject to confirmation by Formula 1 and the FIA. Always check the official timetable closer to the event.