In Madrid’s Puerta del Sol this week, Formula One fans were not shy in calling on the gods to look kindly on their favoured drivers on a newly built circuit that appears punishingly unforgiving. Legend has it that rubbing the paws or backside of the bear in the famous El Oso y el Madroño statue at the square’s heart confers good luck. The drivers may well need it.
Day one of action at the brand new Madring track began with F2’s Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak careening into the barriers and his car catching fire, leaving the onlooking George Russell shocked before the F1 drivers took to the wheel. Despite fears the Madring would not be ready in time, it is done and dusted. What sort of racing it will present for the Spanish Grand Prix is now the question.
Billed as a street circuit, it is in fact a hybrid of real roads and purpose-built track; narrow, with fast corners and walls looming for much of the lap, there is going to be virtually no margin for error. This was demonstrated in F2 practice on Friday. Russell, who had previously described the Madring as the “most risky” on the calendar was watching with some members of the media in the Mercedes motorhome when the Art Grand Prix driver’s crash happened.
Inthraphuvasak, who had to leap out in short order after his car burst into flames, had crashed rearward at high speed into the barriers after spinning at turn 19 and Russell observed that the Madring was set to be an even sterner test than Monaco. Here, there’s less margin.” The issue, explained Russell, was that the fast corners were combined with the angles of the barriers on exit. The car is going towards the wall but the wall is sort of coming in.” When F3 held a test here recently, there were 19 red flags and three cars suffered broken chassis.
Russell said he was surprised it was only 19 red flags. He was not alone in his concern, with Lewis Hamilton echoing his sentiments. The drivers were up to speed with alacrity and no little composure, with Russell topping the timesheets for Mercedes, ahead of his teammate Kimi Antonelli who leads him by 66 points in the drivers’ championship.
Certainly the sense of spectacle was delivered, as was surely the aim with high speeds on a narrow track flanked by walls, and illustrated in its signature corner La Monumental. A 550 metre-long stretch of 13.5-degree banking, through which the cars are accelerating to great effect, compressing into the track amid an amphitheatre of grandstands before heading over a blind crest and barrelling downwards out of the corner. There is even a little history here too, with turn eight – “El Bunker” – named for La Mata Espesa, two bunkers built in 1936 by the Republican forces to protect Madrid from attack during the Spanish civil war.
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