2026 Spanish Grand Prix Review: Madring's Missed Potential

The 2026 Spanish Grand Prix was billed as Madrid’s big arrival on Formula 1’s calendar. It ended up as a warning.

The Madring, a part-permanent, part-street hybrid looping in and out of the IFEMA conference centre in the north-east of the city, promised a fresh take on the modern urban circuit. It delivered a procession.

A spectacular stage, a flat race

Nobody in the paddock complained about the setting. Drivers raved about the atmosphere, the city, the buzz around a new home for the Spanish Grand Prix. Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz, Lewis Hamilton, Arvid Lindblad – the local heroes and global stars all talked up the off-track experience.

On track, the verdict was far colder.

Lindblad admitted it “wasn't the most exciting race”. Audi’s Gabriel Bortoleto went further when asked if it was as dull to drive as it was to watch.

“Yeah, I almost fell asleep as well,” he said.

Haas’s Esteban Ocon pointed straight at the tyres. With little degradation or graining on Sunday, strategy vanished, and with it any sense of jeopardy.

“It was like 120% from as soon as you pitted to the end,” he 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 ran flat-out. The race never caught fire.

A layout under the microscope

The deeper frustration lay with the circuit itself.

Max Verstappen’s lap-one excursion at the opening chicane told its own story: tight, awkward, and with almost no space to pass. Turn 5-6, another chicane, quickly became the focal point of criticism – too narrow, too bumpy, too kerb-heavy to invite a proper lunge. The sequence of left-handers after the banked La Monumental corner hemmed the drivers in even more.

“I don't know how someone looks at this design and goes, mint!” Lando Norris snapped in the press conference.

Visibility – or the lack of it – set off alarm bells as well. Sainz grouped Madrid with Jeddah and Baku in terms of blind, high-speed sections and did not hide his concern.

“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.”

Alonso, never shy of a blunt line, punctured the hype around the showpiece La Monumental banking. The Aston Martin driver joked that his own press officer, Michael Clayton, could take Turn 12 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,” he said.

When a corner designed as a spectacle demands almost nothing from a two-time world champion, something has gone missing in translation.

Drivers offer the redesign

The criticism was not just noise. The grid arrived armed with ideas.

George Russell honed in on the core weakness.

“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.”

The longest straight feeds a bottleneck, not a braking duel. The result is inevitable: DRS trains with nowhere to go.

Norris took the scalpel to the final sector.

“They should get rid of [Turns] 18-19 – useless,” he said.

His proposal was simple and aggressive: draw a straight line from Turn 17 to Turn 20, then open up a huge braking zone.

“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.”

Valtteri Bottas, driving for Cadillac, echoed Russell’s view that it was “quite easy” to defend after the longest straight. He then circled back to the blind nature of the middle and final sectors.

“What I'm not a big fan of is the sector two and three, how blind it is, especially people on the slow laps,” he said. “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.”

The template is there: Jeddah evolved. Madrid, the drivers argue, must do the same.

Turn 5 drew the heaviest fire. On paper, it is a prime overtaking spot: a big stop into a chicane. In reality, the combination of bumps, high kerbs and a narrow entry shuts the door on any realistic move.

Williams’s Alex Albon said: “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 questioned whether the Turn 5-6 chicane belonged on a modern F1 track at all.

“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.”

Even La Monumental, the visual calling card of the Madring, came under technical scrutiny. Verstappen liked the idea of the banking but not 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 message from the cockpit was consistent: the bones of a good circuit might be there, but the angles are wrong.

The bigger question: are street circuits the problem?

Beneath the specifics of Turns 5, 18, 19 or 20 lies a broader tension between modern F1 cars and the street-style circuits that promoters love.

Verstappen did not sugar-coat his stance.

“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 landed in almost the same place.

“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.”

The Madring was sold as the antidote to the stereotype of the dull, stop-start city race. Designer Jarno Zaffelli had spoken of its “flow” and its unique character, and said testing feedback had been “very positive”. He hoped people would walk away seeing that “it's possible to build a street circuit that is not boring.”

The backdrop, the infrastructure, the event around the track all lived up to that ambition. The grand prix did not.

What matters now is not the post-mortem, but the response. Changes to the layout are already being discussed for the next Spanish Grand Prix. The drivers have been unflinching in their criticism, but they have also handed the organisers a detailed blueprint.

Madrid wanted to prove it belongs on the calendar. The real test starts with what they do to the Madring before Formula 1 comes back.