{"id":893259,"date":"2026-09-15T20:42:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T20:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/893259\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T20:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T20:42:14","slug":"an-f1-circuit-of-two-halves-what-madring-can-and-cant-easily-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/893259\/","title":{"rendered":"An F1 circuit of two halves: What Madring can and can’t easily fix"},"content":{"rendered":"

The willingness to change is not in question. The feasibility of the changes drivers actually want is a separate matter, because Madring is not one circuit but two, stitched together, and only one of them is truly Formula 1\u2019s to rebuild.<\/p>\n

The main quirk of the Madring is that it wasn\u2019t built on a fully blank canvas.<\/p>\n

Roughly half the lap winds through existing roads around the IFEMA exhibition centre, where the paddock and pit buildings sit inside the halls themselves \u2013 an arrangement unusual enough that the pitlane is effectively split by more than 100 metres of existing infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The other half, laid across open ground in Valdebebas on the other side of the M40 motorway, was designed from scratch, complete with the elevation change and banking that produce La Monumental, the most talked-about feature of the track over the weekend.<\/p>\n

The fact that the circuit is divided into two is relevant because it draws a line between the corners that can be meaningfully redesigned and the corners it is stuck negotiating around without coming up with a completely new layout.<\/p>\n

The changes with real scope<\/p>\n

The Valdebebas section is where the organisers have more room to move and improve, as it is less constrained by big permanent buildings or a road that has to keep functioning as a road for 51 weeks of the year. It\u2019s not unlimited space, but in theory there\u2019s a more wiggle room than around the IFEMA area.<\/p>\n

\"Liam<\/p>\n

La Monumental lives in the part of the circuit that was designed from scratch<\/p>\n

\n Grand Prix Photo\n <\/p>\n

That is also where some of the more straightforward fixes could live.<\/p>\n

Norris and Fernando Alonso<\/a> both flagged the blind, narrow-feeling sections through the middle of the lap, and Norris drew a direct comparison to Jeddah<\/a>, where similar complaints after that circuit\u2019s debut were addressed simply by widening the walls in the affected sections \u2013 a change that reshapes sightlines and margin for error without touching the line the track actually takes.<\/p>\n

If Madring\u2019s equivalent problem areas sit in the open Valdebebas section rather than by IFEMA\u2019s structures, that kind of fix should be genuinely low-effort.<\/p>\n

Carlos Sainz<\/a>, both a Madrid native and the event\u2019s ambassador, indicated the FIA, the drivers and the circuit would look at Turn 5 in particular, with Turns 1 and 13 also under consideration.<\/p>\n

His Williams<\/a> team-mate Alex Albon was the one to frame Madring\u2019s teething problems the way most new circuits are eventually framed: needing two or three targeted changes rather than a wholesale rethink.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would only take two or three changes to fix the problem,\u201d Albon said, \u201cbecause it\u2019s not a bad circuit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The changes that run into IFEMA<\/p>\n

The harder problem the organisers will need to solve is that several of the most-repeated driver complaints point at exactly the sections built around the exhibition centre rather than the open Valdebebas land.<\/p>\n

\"Lando<\/p>\n

The areas around IFEMA will be harder to alter<\/p>\n

\n Grand Prix Photo\n <\/p>\n

Norris\u2019s most specific suggestion was to remove Turns 18 and 19 entirely \u2013 he called them \u201cuseless\u201d \u2013 in favour of a straight into a wide hairpin, citing Turn 1 or Turn 10 in Austin as the model.<\/p>\n

But that final technical sector runs directly alongside IFEMA\u2019s exhibition halls; grandstands there are sold specifically on proximity to Turns 18 through 20.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an added wrinkle specific to that corner, too: Turn 18 sits immediately after one of the two short tunnels that carry the track beneath the M40 motorway between the IFEMA and Valdebebas halves of the lap \u2013 one on the way out to Valdebebas, one on the way back.<\/p>\n

A tunnel portal isn\u2019t something you widen with a wall move; the entry Norris wants reshaped is constrained by a fixed underground structure before it even reaches the buildings around it.<\/p>\n

Widening that entry the way he describes would mean moving the track\u2019s boundary relative to a fixed tunnel and a fixed building, not just repainting the racing line \u2013 a fundamentally different scale of project from a wall move in open ground.<\/p>\n

The Turn 5-6 chicane carries the same problem in reverse. It was designed as the circuit\u2019s primary overtaking zone off the longest straight, and Antonelli\u2019s own account of trying it shows exactly how it failed: a driver who commits to the inside line is one miscalculation away from putting both cars in the wall, which is precisely why he chose not to.<\/p>\n

Norris, asked directly what needs fixing for next year, put Turns 5, 6 and 7 in his \u201ctrickier\u201d category, distinct from the simpler fix he wants at 18 and 19 \u2013 an acknowledgement that even the drivers pushing hardest for change aren\u2019t sure what the right geometry looks like there.<\/p>\n

The approach to Turns 5 and 6 could possibly be made wider, but if that\u2019s a big enough change to improve the racing remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

\"Liam<\/p>\n

The chicanes didn\u2019t lead to any overtaking<\/p>\n

\n Red Bull\n <\/p>\n

Fixing a combined-input corner like that usually means opening the entry or changing the approach angle entirely \u2013 but Turn 5 sits within the street-style sector that Oliver Bearman pointed to as evidence Madring had wasted a rare opportunity.<\/p>\n

He said Baku<\/a> \u201chad a lot more limitations with buildings around it,\u201d and still produced a layout that lends itself to overtaking.<\/p>\n

The implication is that IFEMA\u2019s constraints are real but not insurmountable \u2013 Baku managed harder ones \u2013 yet they still may complicate the cleanest version of a fix.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a further complication that has nothing to do with corners at all.<\/p>\n

The pitlane\u2019s unusual length \u2013 Norris joked it was \u201csix kilometres long\u201d \u2013 dictated by the gap between the two halves of the paddock inside IFEMA\u2019s halls, has already been named by drivers as a reason nobody tried an aggressive strategy.<\/p>\n

That is a structural feature of the venue, not a layout choice that can be redrawn on a whiteboard before 2027.<\/p>\n

A track that will have to be judged twice<\/p>\n

None of this makes Madring\u2019s promises about change empty talk.<\/p>\n

The track will need to be reinstalled regardless, since the circuit is partly disassembled between events, and that actually works in the organiser\u2019s favour: changes to the Valdebebas section can, in theory, be folded into a process that was already going to happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The willingness to change is not in question. The feasibility of the changes drivers actually want is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":893260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[307248,64,63,817,813,816,254733,85],"class_list":["post-893259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-2026-spanish-gp","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-madring","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/893260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}