Asked on Thursday about the risk of wet weather returning to Interlagos, Verstappen gave the quote that will travel. “I installed antivirus on my car, so I’ll be fine,” the Red Bull driver told the FIA press conference, according to GPblog.

The target of the gag was the chaos at Sepang on 4 October, when the Bahrain Grand Prix, relocated to Malaysia, began with an unprecedented power-delivery failure during the formation laps behind the Safety Car. As cars left the pit lane in heavy rain, several almost came to a halt, Verstappen among them, along with Lewis Hamilton. Race control abandoned the start procedure and the race only got underway roughly 40 minutes later.

A standardised bug, not a Red Bull one

The failure was in the FIA’s standardised control software, not in anything Red Bull had produced. The 2026 regulations dropped the MGU-H and shifted the power unit closer to a 50/50 split between combustion and electric power. The FIA later explained that at Sepang a combination of low engine speed, low-grip conditions, wet-weather energy management settings and the circuit’s sector configuration led to an unintended loss of power on a number of cars.

Hamilton described what that felt like from the cockpit.

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“I had to stop on track and stop the car and engine and restart it. I’ve never done that before,” he said in Malaysia.

During the delay, the FIA Technical Department pushed an updated software release to every team, removing the energy limit constraint in the affected sectors, and the race was eventually run. The governing body said it, the teams and the power unit manufacturers would carry out a full review of the issue.

Lindblad gets the same gag

Racing Bulls rookie Arvid Lindblad, sitting on the same panel, said he hoped the problems from Malaysia would stay in the past if the rain arrived again. Verstappen could not resist a follow-up at the junior Red Bull team’s expense, according to GPblog.

“You’ll be on the same software, mate. So, don’t worry.”

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Racing Bulls use the same Red Bull-Ford power unit as the senior team, which is the technical point under the joke. If the bug returns in similar conditions at Interlagos, it is likely to catch the Red Bull engines first.

No title at stake, but plenty else

The drivers’ championship is already settled. Andrea Kimi Antonelli clinched the title at the Mexico City Grand Prix on 1 November, finishing third on 380 points to seal it with four rounds to spare and become, at 20 years and 2 months, the youngest world champion in Formula 1, breaking Sebastian Vettel’s 2010 record.

What is live is the fight behind Antonelli and the constructors’ order. Verstappen sits second on 261 points, two ahead of Hamilton on 259, with George Russell a further nine back on 250. Red Bull, on 382 points, holds third in the constructors’ standings, just 17 points clear of McLaren on 365.

Red Bull has so far kept Verstappen off a fresh power unit this weekend, although the team has not ruled out a change in the coming days. He is already at the permitted limit on almost every power-unit component, only the PU-ANC still has room, so any further new component beyond the pool would carry a grid or pit-lane penalty.

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Qualifying at Interlagos is on Saturday, 7 November, with the race on Sunday, 8 November.

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