Renting a Car in Malaysia for the F1 Trip — and the Days Not to Drive

A rental car is genuinely useful on this trip and genuinely a bad idea on exactly three days of it. This page covers what you need before you can legally drive here, what surprises people once they do, and where the line sits.

Before you fly: the International Driving Permit

Most non-ASEAN visitors need an International Driving Permit, and the critical detail is that you cannot get one in Malaysia. It has to be issued by the recognised authority in your own country before you travel, and it is typically valid for one year from issue. Turning up without one and hoping to sort it locally does not work.

Two nuances:

• Licences already in English — UK, US, Australian, Irish — are often accepted on their own under the legal minimum. But rental companies set their own rules, and many will ask for an IDP anyway. An IDP costs very little at home and removes an argument at a counter in a country where you do not have a fallback.
• ASEAN licences are accepted for short stays without an IDP.

If your licence is not in English, you will need a certified translation alongside it.

Three things that catch visitors out

We drive on the left. Steering wheel on the right, same as the UK, Australia, Japan and Singapore. If you are coming from mainland Europe or North America, give yourself a quiet road for the first half hour, and pay particular attention at roundabouts and at junctions where you are turning across traffic — that is where the muscle memory betrays people.

Tolls are cashless. Malaysian expressways — including the ones between Kuala Lumpur, the circuit and the south — take payment by Touch ‘n Go card or RFID tag only. There is no cash lane to fall back on. Confirm at pickup that the car has a working card or tag and that you know how to top it up; the first toll gantry is a bad place to discover otherwise. A Touch ‘n Go card costs RM 10 and needs no registration, so there is no reason to be caught out.

Kuala Lumpur traffic is worse than the map suggests. Distances in the city are short and journey times are not. Between the traffic, the parking and the fact that Grab is cheap and everywhere, a car is a liability inside KL and an asset outside it.

Where a car earns its keep

• The run south. Kuala Lumpur → Melaka → Johor at your own pace, stopping where you want. See the Melaka stopover and the overland guide.
• Day trips. Putrajaya, Kuala Selangor, the coast — all awkward by public transport and easy by car.
• Groups and families. Four people plus luggage makes the economics obvious.
• Staying outside the city. If you have based yourself around the airport or in Nilai, a car turns a limited area into a flexible one.

Where it does not: race day

We will be blunt, because this is the section that saves people a bad Sunday.

Circuit parking is first come, first served across bays 1–17, at RM 20 per car entry on the published 2025 rates, at your own risk, and it fills early for major events. That part is survivable. The part that is not is the exit: a six-figure crowd leaving on two roads within the same hour, after a long hot day, possibly having had a drink, in a car you are not used to, on a side of the road you may not be used to either.

The alternatives are better on every axis. A pre-arranged driver with a named pickup point costs less than the stress, and the train-plus-ride route via Salak Tinggi bypasses the worst of it entirely. Both are covered in getting to the circuit.

Rent for the week if you want the freedom. Do not use it on 2, 3 and 4 October.

Taking a rental into Singapore: almost certainly not

This one comes up constantly for two-race travellers, and the answer is usually no.

A foreign-registered vehicle entering Singapore needs a Vehicle Entry Permit (VEP) and an associated Autopass card. The Autopass is encoded with one specific vehicle’s particulars and is strictly non-transferable, and the application process runs to roughly two weeks including approval and collection.

In practice that means a rental car can only cross if the rental company itself holds a valid VEP and Autopass for that exact vehicle and permits cross-border use in the agreement. Most do not. Assume you are returning the car in Malaysia and crossing by bus or train — which is the faster option anyway once you factor in the checkpoints.

Booking, and who you are actually booking with

We do not rent cars. Malaysian rental vehicles are licensed by APAD under specific classes, and anyone putting a privately owned car out for hire is operating without that licence and without insurance that covers commercial hire — which is the part that matters if something goes wrong.

So: book with a licensed rental company or through a platform that only lists them, check that the IDP requirement, the toll payment method and the insurance excess are all written down before you pay, and photograph the car at pickup. Where we link to booking platforms we may earn a commission, which never changes your price and never changes what we recommend — see about this site for exactly how that works.

Next

• Getting to the circuit — the routes that work on race day
• KL to Singapore overland — bus, train and the border
• Flying in — visas, arrival cards, money and power sockets