Sepang 2026 · Stories
The Malaysian Team in Everything but Name
By Will Tygart · September 28, 2026
Mercedes doesn't need the words "Malaysian Grand Prix" to have a home race. Malaysia's name is on the car, on the engine, on the circuit itself.
Read the full team name: Mercedes-AMG Petronas. Petronas — Malaysia's state oil giant, the twin-towers company, one of the most recognizable Malaysian brands on earth — has been the team's title sponsor since the works outfit returned to Formula 1 in 2010. Sixteen years. That's not a sticker deal; it's a marriage. Petronas is the Title and Technical Partner, which means Malaysian fuel and lubricants have been inside every one of those championship-winning power units. When a Mercedes wins, a little bit of Malaysia wins.
And at Sepang, they've won. Lewis Hamilton's 2014 victory here was the dominant kind — pole, lead, gone. It was the second race of the hybrid era, the year Mercedes turned Formula 1 into a private showcase, and Sepang got the full demonstration: nearly twenty seconds clear at the flag.
Two years later, the same track gave the partnership its cruelest afternoon. Hamilton was cruising to a win in 2016 — fifteen laps from the flag, championship math working in his favor — when his engine let go in a plume of smoke. At Petronas's home circuit. In front of Petronas's people. The title momentum swung to Nico Rosberg, who never gave it back. I've written about that afternoon at length — it remains one of the most painful what-ifs in the sport's history — but here's the team angle: your engine blows up at your title partner's home race, while you're fighting your teammate for the world title. There is no worse place for it to happen, and it happened there.
That's the thing about this weekend. For every other team, Sepang is a beloved away ground. For Mercedes, it's something closer to a homecoming in everything but the official title — the circuit is literally named the PETRONAS Sepang International Circuit. The grandstands will be full of fans in teal. The team arrives leading both championships, with George Russell and Kimi Antonelli — two drivers who have never raced here, carrying the hopes of a fanbase that has waited nine years.
Sixteen years of partnership. A circuit with your name on it. A country that treats your team like its own. Mercedes has won everywhere, but there's only one place where winning feels like coming home.