2026 Spanish Grand Prix: A Dull Race at the Madring
The 2026 Spanish Grand Prix was billed as a fresh era for Formula 1 in Spain. What it delivered on Sunday at the Madring was something else entirely: a high-speed parade dressed up as a street-race spectacular.
The setting dazzled. The racing didn’t.
Built partly on permanent asphalt and partly on the public roads that weave in and out of the IFEMA conference centre in north-east Madrid, the Madring arrived with the promise of a new kind of city circuit. Designer Jarno Zaffelli had spoken proudly about its “flow” and its uniqueness. He hoped it would prove that a street track “is not boring.”
The drivers, and the race, told a harsher story.
Atmosphere: 10/10. Racing: not so much
Across the paddock, the verdict on the backdrop was glowing. Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz, Lewis Hamilton, Arvid Lindblad – they all talked up the buzz, the crowd, the sense that Madrid had thrown itself into F1’s arms.
But once the lights went out, the enthusiasm evaporated.
Lindblad admitted it “wasn't the most exciting race.” Gabriel Bortoleto went further when asked if it was as dull to drive as it looked to watch.
“Yeah, I almost fell asleep as well,” the Audi driver said, half-joking, but only half.
Esteban Ocon pointed to the tyres as a key reason the race never came alive. With little degradation and no graining on Sunday, there was no strategic tension, no late-race swings.
“It was like 120% from as soon as you pitted to the end,” the Haas driver said. “And because the graining didn't happen, that's where we ended up. If we had a race on Friday, it would have been much better.”
The cars were flat-out. The plot never thickened.
A layout under fire
If the tyre behaviour dulled the strategy, the track design strangled the racing.
Max Verstappen’s lap-one trip off at the opening chicane underlined how little margin there was there – and how little room to fight. The Turn 5-6 chicane quickly became the symbol of the Madring’s problems: too narrow, too awkward, too easy to block.
The sequence of left-handers after the banked La Monumental corner left drivers feeling boxed in, with few realistic chances to attack. Lando Norris, never shy in a debrief, summed up the mood with a withering line.
“I don't know how someone looks at this design and goes, mint!” the McLaren driver said.
Visibility was another sore point. A number of corners left drivers effectively blind as they committed at high speed, and Sainz did not hide his frustration.
“Same as in Jeddah and Baku, it's poor,” he said. “But it seems like the FIA is happy to go in this direction moving forward in terms of new circuits, which obviously, as drivers, we are raising our… not concerns – but our point of wanting to keep improving safety.
“We’re going to go towards these circuits because going at 260km/h, 270km/h on esses that you cannot see through is definitely eye-opening and definitely makes you question how safe everything is.”
When the drivers start talking about “eye-opening” sections and questioning safety, the honeymoon is already over.
La Monumental: big banking, small reward
La Monumental, the heavily marketed banked corner, was supposed to be Madring’s calling card. It ended up as a punchline.
Alonso, never one to sugar-coat, deflated the hype in a single swipe. He said his Aston Martin press officer, Michael Clayton, could have taken the corner flat out.
“It is sad, you know, in a way, with this generation of cars to come to a very nice circuit like this one, with challenges here and there, like Monumental corner, Turn 12, and the driver input is just nothing.
“Michael can drive in Turn 12 because you go flat with no deployment,” Alonso said.
Verstappen, too, liked the idea more than the execution. “Yeah, I mean, it's cool, the banking, but I think they should have done it the other way around, though. Initially more banking and then just flatten it out.”
The headline corner looked spectacular. It didn’t change the race.
The core complaint: nowhere to pass
Strip away the detail and one flaw sits at the heart of the Madring: for all its length and speed, it does not give drivers a clean, obvious place to overtake.
George Russell put it bluntly.
“I guess the one small frustration in the design is just the lack of clear overtaking opportunities,” he said. “On every track, at the end of a long straight, you need a clear opportunity to overtake, and the longest straight here goes into that tight roundabout section. So that's probably the only thing we wish was different.”
That “roundabout section” killed the main chance to strike. Long DRS zone, big build-up, no payoff.
Valtteri Bottas agreed it was “quite easy” to defend after the longest straight, a death sentence for modern F1 racing where the cars are big, heavy and difficult to follow.
The Finn had another issue: the blind nature of sectors two and three.
“What I'm not a big fan of is the sector two and three, how blind it is, especially people on the slow laps. Sometimes it's a bit sketchy, unnecessarily blind in places. But that was the first time we went to Saudi, it was the same issue and then they widened some of the walls, so I don't know – maybe there's some room for improvement.”
Room for improvement was the theme of the weekend.
Turn 5: the chicane nobody wants
If there was one corner that drew near-universal criticism, it was Turn 5.
On paper, it should work: a heavy braking zone into a chicane. In reality, the bumpy entry, high kerbs and narrow track turn it into a no-go area for serious moves.
Williams driver Alex Albon pointed straight at it.
“I think we need to revisit this track a little bit… because I think, I don't know if you watched the F3 and F2 races, but it was all drivers going side by side in the chicane and then complaining that one of them didn't let them back past, so that corner in particular is the corner that I think needs the most work.”
Bortoleto went further, questioning why that kind of chicane exists at all with the current machinery.
“I just don't see how… Like even if they slow down the corner, what are they going to do, you know… especially with the big cars we have nowadays; if it was 1990s cars, maybe you could put something, but it's not like this anymore.”
The Madring tried to mix old-school street elements with modern F1. Turn 5 showed just how badly that blend can go wrong.
Norris’s blueprint for a fix
Criticism is one thing. Solutions are another. Norris, to his credit, offered a clear redesign.
“They should get rid of [Turns] 18-19 – useless,” he said.
His vision is simple: cut the fiddly late-section corners and build a proper overtaking zone.
He suggested “a straight line from [Turn] 17 straight to 20, have a much wider entry like Austin Turn 1 or Turn 10 in Austin.
“A big hairpin, you create much better opportunities for everyone and you'll be able to enjoy the race. There's some simple changes and maybe some trickier ones like Turn 5, 6, 7.”
The message from the cockpit is consistent: fewer awkward kinks, more big braking zones, more space. Give these cars somewhere to fight.
The bigger question: are street circuits the problem?
Underneath the specific complaints about Madrid sits a broader unease with F1’s street-circuit obsession.
Verstappen did not hide his feelings.
“I'm not a fan of street circuits, so that will never change. I will always prefer to drive on a track like Spa.
“What they have done, the way they have built everything up, I think they have done a really good job, but I'm not a fan of street circuits.”
Alonso echoed that sentiment.
“I still prefer normal circuits. You know, in general, you push the limits of the car… On a street circuit, you are always 95% because the track is always surprising you.”
In other words: the drivers respect the effort, admire the show, and still long for proper racing tracks where they can lean on the car without concrete looming at every mistake.
What happens next?
The criticism has not fallen on deaf ears. Discussions are already underway about changes to the Madring layout for the next Spanish Grand Prix. Corners will be studied. Walls may move. Chicanes could disappear.
The atmosphere in Madrid proved F1 can thrive in Spain without Barcelona. The question now is whether the circuit can be reshaped into something that deserves that passion.
Because if the sport wants the Madring to become a modern classic rather than a one-line punchline, the next version cannot be another 300-kilometre procession.
