Marquee corners pinned with their turn numbers · start/finish and racing direction shown
Circuit Vitals
Length
5.543 km
Corners
15
Race laps
56
Race distance
310.408 km
Direction
Clockwise
Race lap record
1:34.080 — Vettel ’17
First F1 GP
1999
2026 round
R16 · Oct 4
Circuit character
Sepang runs 15 turns, ten of them right-handers, over a 5.543 km lap that Hermann Tilke laid out in 1999 — the blueprint for almost every circuit he designed afterwards. Its corners carry no traditional names, so the guide below describes the sections rather than pinning numbers to them.
1
The two long straights
Sepang’s signature. A pair of near-parallel straights, each around 900 m, joined at one end by a tight hairpin and at the other by the fast opening complex. Both are full-throttle Overtake Mode territory.
2
Turn 1 complex
A wide, banked right at the end of the main straight that immediately doubles back left. Enormously wide on entry — three cars abreast happens here — and the single best passing place on the lap.
3
The fast middle sweeps
A run of quick, committed direction changes through the middle sector where downforce decides everything. Cars that lack rear stability lose most of their lap time in this stretch.
4
The hairpin
A slow, tightening right that dumps onto the back straight. Traction and rear tyre temperature out of here set up the whole following straight.
5
The final corner
The tight last right that feeds the main straight. Getting a run out of it is the classic Sepang overtake set-up — hence the traffic into Turn 1.
6
Heat, humidity and rain
The real character of the place. Track temperatures past 50 °C punish tyres and cooling, and the afternoon monsoon has decided more Malaysian Grands Prix than any corner has.
Where the overtakes happen
In 2026, DRS is gone — replaced by Overtake Mode, the active-aero manual override that drivers save and deploy on the straights.
Main straight → Turn 1
The classic Sepang pass. Roughly 900 m of full throttle into a corner wide enough to run two or three lines.
Back straight → the hairpin
The mirror image, and the reason a bad exit from the preceding corner is so expensive here.
Exact 2026 override-activation points are set by the FIA each weekend; the zones above are where the passing has traditionally happened here.
Cadillac at Sepang. Round 16 takes the grid somewhere nobody on it has raced a current car — Formula 1 last visited Sepang in 2017. That resets the usual set-up advantage, and on a lap this dependent on high-speed direction change it is a real test of the MAC-26’s weakest area. See where the car stands in our gap tracker and downforce analysis.