Madrid Welcomes Formula 1: A New Era Begins
Madrid has never been short of spectacle. This is the city of 15 European Cups, of white shirts and late winners, of Zinedine Zidane’s volley and Kylian Mbappe’s latest party piece. A place where 75,000 people think nothing of roaring a world superstar to another routine 3-0 by half-time.
Now Formula 1 is walking straight into that cauldron and asking for a share of the noise.
For the first time since 1981, Grand Prix racing returns to the Spanish capital. Not to the postcard Madrid of the Prado, Salamanca’s boutiques or the grand boulevards, but to an expo complex by the airport, carved into a new street circuit called Madring. A unicorn, as one of its architects calls it, made real in asphalt, concrete and 26 degrees of banking.
A football city looks sideways
This is not a town searching for a new sporting obsession. Real Madrid sit atop the European game with 36 La Liga titles and a conveyor belt of Galacticos that now runs through Jude Bellingham and Mbappe. Atletico Madrid snarl away across town. Most cities would be full. Madrid feels perpetually hungry.
Yet even here, curiosity cuts through the loyalty.
“Yes, [the F1 race] is good for Madrid,” says one fan, standing in the shadow of the revamped Bernabeu – now a gleaming steel spaceship but still as steep and intimidating as ever inside. “There is pride in our sport, Madrid is an open city with open people and open minds. The race can take Madrid’s identity outside of football… But I’m more than excited, I’m curious – I want to see how it goes.”
Another lifelong Madridista has chased F1 around Europe. “We’ve always been dreaming of having something closer to home. Having it back is great. I’ve been to Barcelona and the Belgian GP and I think let’s see how it goes. Organising tends to be messy in the first year – I don’t want to be the guinea pig.”
He pauses, then leans into the bigger picture.
“Let’s hope it brings the city more into the spotlight. Madrid has a lot to learn from F1 about how to run a global spectacle; F1 could probably learn the true Spanish way. Barcelona is more international, the drivers and fans coming to Madrid will get more of a taste of Spain.”
Football may rule, but the door is open.
From fantasy to 10-year deal
The man who pushed hardest at that door knows what it is to chase the impossible. Luis Garcia Abad, Madring boss and former manager to Fernando Alonso, once treated the idea of a Madrid Grand Prix as little more than a joke.
“An F1 grand prix is like a unicorn – you are trying always to see the unicorn but at the end you realise sometimes it’s impossible,” he says. “The queue of cities trying to organise an F1 GP is huge. They have to choose right – we signed a contract for 10 years.”
Seven or eight years ago, the fantasy started to gain shape. Ifema, the quasi-state organisation that runs the expo site, called him. Could this really work here, on the fringe of the city, away from the postcard views?
“After one morning here I said: ‘It’s possible.’”
The choice was deliberate. Madrid’s elegant centre – the Palaciosian facades, the birdsong-style crossing signals, the gentle sway of Mexican conifers over ordered traffic – doesn’t lend itself to a modern F1 layout. The inner city’s flat, gridded structure might look good on a map, less so when you need 22 corners, run-off areas and the infrastructure of a global race.
So the Grand Prix goes to the expo grounds by the airport. Less romantic, more practical. A canvas they could bend to their will.
A street circuit with teeth
Make no mistake: Madring is a street circuit. Part public road, part purpose-built ribbon of tarmac squeezed between walls that seem to lean in on you as you walk it. Standing on the racing line, the place feels narrow, intense, almost claustrophobic. The sort of track where a driver knows that if you go offline by a metre, you’re in the barrier.
“From a driver’s point of view it’s quite a harsh circuit,” Abad says. “Twenty-two corners, up and down, banking corners – the circuit is adapted to the new [F1] regulations. I spoke with Charles Leclerc and he said it was an amazing track, and in the race I believe you will have the opportunity to overtake, but not by free. We’re talking about gladiators – the best drivers in the world.”
Plenty of those gladiators-in-waiting have already had a taste. Formula 3 has tested here, and the reviews are not shy.
“It’s going to be really edgy,” says Madrid’s own F3 driver Bruno del Pino. “You are always on the limit, the corners are quick and the walls are close. It’s like Jeddah but with more difficulty.
“With Monumental, you see so much of an angle it never ends. The first time around, you see it going straight up and you feel like you’ll fly straight out [of the track]. It is flat for us because of the downforce so it’s not really a corner, but the previous combination of Turns 10 and 11 are high speed and close to the wall – quite a few drivers will kiss the wall.”
Britain’s Freddie Slater goes further still. “A lap of Madrid is so exhilarating, and the adrenaline is pumping – it’s an incredible track to drive. It’s one of the best tracks on calendar, if not the best. It’s got character, it’s got bumps, uphill and downhill – it’s a bit more old-school.”
The walls, the bumps, the blind crests: this is not a sterile, flat car park loop. It wants to bite.
Monumental: Madrid’s statement corner
Every new circuit wants its postcard. Abu Dhabi has its hotel. Austin has Turn 1. Zandvoort has its banking. Madrid has gone all-in on one word: Monumental.
Turn 12 is the corner everyone in the paddock is already talking about. A 26-degree banked curve, longer than Zandvoort’s, wrapping around what will feel like a small town of grandstands, hospitality and fan zones. More than 30,000 people around one bend, hanging over the action.
“It’s a real experience, not just to be in Madrid but for F1,” Abad says. “Every part of the track has its own personality. Monumental… Turn 12, is huge, amazing. We really wanted to have an iconic part of the circuit – more than 30,000 people around one corner.”
Carlos Jimenez, operations director for Ifema, explains how that vision took shape.
“Luis wanted to think of something recognisable in our circuit. Something iconic,” he says.
The result is a structure that looks like a fortress on a hill. The banking rises so sharply it is hard work simply to walk up, never mind sit on, particularly in the searing 44C heat that scorched the build. Above it, a VIP area fit, literally, for royalty – a place you could quite imagine the King of Spain and his family surveying the show.
On track, the corner will feel different again. With modern F1 downforce, Monumental becomes almost a straight at full throttle, but the approach through Turns 10 and 11 is quick, unforgiving and lined with concrete. Get that sequence wrong and the banking will not save you.
Built in a storm, sold as a spectacle
The glamour on race weekend hides the grind that got Madring ready. The numbers are blunt: 65m euros of extra construction around the circuit, 85m euros for the track itself. The conditions were worse.
“There were a lot of challenges,” Jimenez says. “We started building it in the wettest winter in 20 years in Spain. The rain was torrential. We suffered a lot, and had to stabilise parts of clay which behaves badly with wet conditions. It was very challenging. There are three layers of asphalt here. We learnt from one layer to the next.”
The circuit leans heavily on sustainability. Power for the race comes from renewable energy, and the design incorporates existing buildings rather than starting from scratch. The city’s compact size and strong public transport network have shaped the plan: many car parks have been stripped out, with fans urged to leave their vehicles at home.
Don’t expect the famous faces to cram onto the metro at Avenida de America, though. Patrick Dempsey, Rafael Nadal, Mbappe and the rest of the celebrity crowd will glide into the sprawling VIP paddock via more discreet routes.
Everyone else will arrive by train, bus or on foot – and step into something Madrid hopes will feel like more than just a race.
“In 2022 it seemed like a little bit of a crazy idea,” Jimenez admits. “But Madrid has momentum right now; it’s a vibrant city, very well known for football. Like a ski resort must have entertainment for apres-ski, a circuit must have good after-race entertainment.
“Madrid will become in top position – the offer of this city is incredible in terms of gastronomy, a spectacular climate, which is very mild in September. And the party in Madrid is unbeatable.”
Does F1 need Madrid – or Madrid need F1?
There is a bigger question hanging over all this. Formula 1 has boomed in new markets, from the United States to the Middle East. Europe, its traditional heartland, already feels crowded. Spain has a long-standing race in Barcelona. Does the championship really need another stop just a few hundred kilometres away?
Abad flips the argument.
“Not just Madrid needing F1, maybe even F1 needing Madrid,” he says. “We’re investing money to create an experience inside of a city. The future of the [F1] championship is something in this direction – we need to take care of customers and spectators. They are our future.”
That is the bet. That in a city where football owns the soul, there is still space for something new, loud and unapologetically different. That Madring’s tight walls, brutal banking and late-summer heat can carve out their own place in the sporting calendar.
On Sunday, the engines will answer. And in a city built on noise, we will find out if F1 can make Madrid sing to a different tune.
