MADRID, SPAIN – SEPTEMBER 13: (EDITORS NOTE: Image has been digitally enhanced.) Lando Norris of Great Britain driving the (1) McLaren MCL40 Mercedes, leads Max Verstappen of the Netherlands driving the (3) Oracle Red Bull Racing RB22 Red Bull Ford Powertrains and Andrea Kimi Antonelli of Italy driving the (12) Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team W17 on track during the F1 Grand Prix of Spain at Madring on September 13, 2026 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Pauline Ballet – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)
Formula 1 via Getty Images
45 years later, Formula One returned to Madrid this weekend. The Spanish Grand Prix hadn’t run in the capital since Jarama in the early 1980s, and the sport had since moved its Spanish home to Barcelona, where the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya has staged the race every year since 1991.
Bringing Formula One back to Madrid meant building a circuit from scratch with a hybrid layout which combined both permanent track and public road around the IFEMA exhibition complex and the Valdebebas district. It tallied up a construction bill of roughly €83 million ($71.6 million) and provided the test of a new circuit with no historical data for experts to work on.
Everyone involved, from Formula One’s own CEO to the drivers who would race it, spent the buildup managing expectations rather than making promises. Stefano Domenicali set the tone days in the build-up. “The first year, as always, I’m waiting for those who are trying to find the details that aren’t perfect,” the Formula One CEO told media, thanking authorities for their work “in a context that isn’t easy”. While Domenicali hedged his bets, Madrid’s race sold out days before race weekend.
Organizers reported 353,000 people came through the gates between Friday and Sunday, a number that went beyond the initial projection which was slightly lower. More than 120,000 grandstand and hospitality tickets sold ahead of the race, with 80,000 attendees traveling in from outside Madrid. That includes an estimated 45,000 from abroad. It reflected the notion of this race being about Madrid as a city showing up on the world stage as much as the Madring circuit.
The economic case behind the race was just as strong as the attendance figures. PwC’s pre-event study put the impact on the Madrid region at €467 million ($402.7 million) and 8,850 jobs, a figure equal to 5.7% of the direct gross value added generated by the Community of Madrid’s recreational activities sector, alongside close to €83 million ($71.6 million) in projected tax and social security revenue.
Organizers were boosted by a high-profile sponsor willing to put its name on an unproven race. TAG Heuer became Formula One’s official timekeeper last year as part of a reported $1 billion, ten-year partnership between LVMH and Liberty Media, but its ties to the sport run back to 1969, when it became the first watch brand to appear on an F1 car. The watchmaker put its name on Monaco in 2025 and then on Madrid’s debut a year later. The paddock showed why they made that choice, with the likes of David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane, Rafa Nadal, Fernando Torres, Luis Figo, Jude Bellingham and Vinícius Júnior showing some of the sporting icons who moved through the grounds over the weekend.
The circuit itself had to win over a genuinely skeptical audience before any of that mattered, and it did. Drivers arrived treating Madring’s 5.4 kilometers as a wildcard without historical data, a mix of street and permanent sections, and a signature corner, La Monumental, banked at 24% over more than 550 meters, the longest banking on the current calendar.
The early verdict, once cars actually hit the track, was mixed, but surprisingly positive. “I actually really loved it,” said Pierre Gasly. “It was very exciting. It’s a track with a lot of adrenaline.” Charles Leclerc, a driver known for favoring demanding street tracks, said he was “quite impressed with the amount of grip there already was, considering that this is a completely new track”. Carlos Sainz, racing in his home city for the first time, called the layout “charismatic, with a lot of different types of corners”. Nico Hülkenberg put it more bluntly: “Hell of a track, the Madring. Tough, very challenging. It’s like Monaco, but just ultra fast”.
Getting 350,000 people in and out of a brand-new site without the gridlock that defined Formula One’s other recent debuts was its own achievement. More than 1,300 national police officers worked the weekend, moving crowds through 18 access points and over 150 entry lanes split across two zones, Madring Sur around IFEMA and Madring Norte in Valdebebas. The circuit sits five minutes from Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport and roughly twenty minutes from the city center by metro, avoiding the logistics nightmares Miami and Las Vegas experienced in their first years.
One part of the weekend that did follow expectations was the race itself. Kimi Antonelli won it, his eighth victory of the season, after a virtual safety car handed him track position over pole-sitter Lando Norris in a pit-stop timing swing rather than a straight fight. Overtaking proved difficult on the new layout, several drivers and outlets described the racing as flat, with a seaon-low of only four overtakes.
Circuit designer Jarno Zaffelli and Formula One have both signaled openness to layout tweaks before next year’s race, the same adjustment period Austin and other new circuits went through in their early seasons.
Everything Madrid controlled, ranging from the crowd to the economics, the sponsor payoff to the logistics, and the reception from a paddock that arrived unconvinced, cleared the bar the city set for itself.
Be the first to comment