The promoters of the 2026 Spanish Grand Prix have revealed the first official video simulation of the track which will host the race.
Construction work is due to begin this month on the Madring, a semi-permanent track running around the Ifema event venue in the north-east of the Spanish capital.Although the track will use some public roads, the majority of its near-five-and-a-half kilometre length will be purpose-built track.
This includes the track’s distinctive ‘Valdebebas’ corner, a high-speed right-hander which forms turn 10. The video indicates this corner will be steeply banked, similar to Zandvoort’s Hugenholzbocht and Luyendykbocht. However Valdebebas appears to involve higher cornering speeds sustained for a longer time than those two corners, which will inevitably place the cars’ tyres under considerable strain.
The video reveals other details of the expected elevation changes at the track. Turn five, which cars will approach at high speeds after around 14 seconds of flat-out acceleration, is slightly blind and dips as the track passes beneath the M11 motorway.
After negotiating Valdebebas, drivers will arrive at high speed again for turn 11, which has a correspondingly wide run-off area. Another pair of quick corners brings the drivers to a sharp right-hander, after which they pass beneath the motorway again.
One point of note for F1 strategists is that the current pit lane design joins the track after the turn one-two chicane, similarly to the configuration seen at Jeddah. This should reduce the amount of time drivers lose making a pit stop, which can encourage teams to attempt more multi-stop strategies.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
But precisely what kind of racing the track generates will be heavily influenced by the performance characteristics of the cars built to the new power unit and chassis rules for the 2026 F1 season.
Construction work on the circuit is due to be completed by May next year. The venue has a 10-year deal to host the Spanish Grand Prix from next season.
Miss nothing from RaceFans
Get a daily email with all our latest stories - and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Formula 1
- Tsunoda won’t “try to be a hero” in qualifying again after Imola crash
- Norris “didn’t expect Red Bull to be as quick as they were”
- How to watch the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix and Indianapolis 500 live
- Alonso, Leclerc, Sainz: Who lost out the most from Imola’s double Safety Car?
- Verstappen explains his stunning first-corner pass on Piastri
Bruno
24th April 2025, 18:36
Nope, don’t like that.
alex
24th April 2025, 18:43
that chicane at the end of sector one is really dreadful. I thought we couldn’t get worse than miami or vegas but eeeesh
BMW P85 V10
24th April 2025, 18:50
i think they took the “best” parts of both circuits and merged it into this gremlin.
Simon
25th April 2025, 0:26
Yep. This gremlin sees plenty of daylight (but not with the same result…)
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
25th April 2025, 8:58
You found a bit you didnt like. Well done, thats the idea. People who love F1 on autosneer
Jere (@jerejj)
24th April 2025, 18:44
I’d already seen one virtual lap video before, but the track configuration is relatively flowing, so I started to like it immediately when I saw the configuration itself for the very first time.
The T6 angle could be slighter, but otherwise, a perfectly enjoyable circuit, especially T10, i.e., the corner that heavily reminiscences Zandvoort’s last corner.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
24th April 2025, 21:34
How about going to Zandvoort instead?
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
25th April 2025, 8:59
Turns our Holland cannot survive on Max alone
montreal95 (@montreal95)
27th April 2025, 16:56
Quite. I thought Zandvoort will disappear the year after Max retires but they can’t even survive until then unfortunately. The track is great but that’s the reality of modern F1.
BenHur
27th April 2025, 22:39
Reminds me a bit of the famous Istanbul Park T8
Mark
24th April 2025, 18:49
Is the date for the race set yet ?
Jere (@jerejj)
25th April 2025, 13:33
Not yet, but the race day will probably be either September 6 or 13 based on what I’ve read, i.e., Madrid will likely form a triple-header with Zandvoort & Monza, either as the middle or final leg.
Patrick (@patwalsh82)
24th April 2025, 19:14
is the surface clay? :)
Jockey Ewing
24th April 2025, 19:55
Likely the tractors have just left after getting done with all the muddier works.
At the chicane “nice” drift, who is at the wheel, the heir of the Uralkali empire maybe?
The graphics are giving nice F1GP2 vibes, I hope simulation-wise it is serving them well.
I would take Portimao, Imola, Spa and Zandvoort any time of the day instead of these new tracks with a forest of fences around them; there are too many blind corners. And with the usual approach of proportionally too much overly zoomed-in footage, it is very hard to follow the events at tracks like this or Jeddah.
The positives about this track, that there are nicely banked turns, and mostly friendly cambers, which would allow good racing if the cars would not be that much affected by dirty air, I guess.
Although the longest banked turn seems to be quite fast for a street circuit, I am not sure that everyone will like it.
BasCB (@bascb)
24th April 2025, 20:05
Yeah, this gives me the vibes of another track trying to hype us up with “luyendijk like banked corner” and “interesting flowing section” but end up being about as inspiring as Jeddah and Sochi combined.
BasCB (@bascb)
24th April 2025, 20:08
Oh, and that first turn will clearly give us the same kind of issues as turn 1 at Jeddah or turn 2-3 (not sure which one exactly) at Sochi. I guess we might also see the same issues with DRS we see at Jeddah (where passing at the last turn means you get done by DRS again) and Abu Dhabi (where the consequent DRS zones mean that you really should wait with passing until the SECOND one after the chicane to avoid being immediately repassed.
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
24th April 2025, 19:18
Them last two corners look nasty.
Love the banked number 10.
The entire track looks like a reasonably interesting mix to me.
We shall see.
Stoo
25th April 2025, 13:16
Snap, ………….. there are some very nice parts to trip up the overly eager drivers, and I can see lots of penalties being dished out for track limits breaches.
Alonslow
24th April 2025, 19:34
T3 chicane is so bad even the official playthrough hit the wall but to be fair they didn’t take the safest line, tried too hard to take a straight line through, quite a bit of track limits offenses as well, tunnel could be good but that chicane ruins it.
Well doesn’t look that bad, but apart from the banked turn, doesn’t look good either, and the place pretty much is a stadium of sorts so extremely ugly, at least tracks like Baku or Monaco have some beauty outside the walls.
montreal95 (@montreal95)
27th April 2025, 16:59
To be fair, the official play driver is a horrible amateur by the looks of it. The tight chicane is the worst but the whole lap is awful, many wrong lines, too fast into corners etc.
Dusty
24th April 2025, 19:49
Video is so bad that they needed to disable the comment section on youtube.
Dex
24th April 2025, 20:02
If it was up to me, I’d vote big NO for this track, as well as Miami, Vegas and similar soulless, artificial piece of scrap. Is it so hard to build a proper race track? Madrid could do with fewer tourists anyway, this is probably the last thing they need there. It’s bad for everybody, except a select few and their pockets.
some racing fan
24th April 2025, 20:36
I’d keep Vegas and ditch Saudi.
Mark (@mrcento)
24th April 2025, 20:26
Absolutely crap. It’s Jeddah, trying to throw in a bit of Laguna Seca without the elevation changes, and Zandvoort, whilst trying to pretend it’s the old Valencia circuit. No overtaking spots, lots of clumsy mickey mouse sections. Clearly designed by somebody that has never seen an F1 car, let alone a race.
Neil (@neilosjames)
24th April 2025, 20:34
First thought – Roland Garros called, it wants its court back.
Second thought – looks fairly awful and likely to produce processional races. Gives off little vibes of lots of crap tracks… if you’re building something specifically with F1 in mind, I have no idea why you’d build that.
J765
24th April 2025, 21:30
– Massive use of taxpayer money. Check
– Corruption and backroom deals. Check.
– Two giant spanish flags. Check.
– Good racing layout. Who cares.
Circuit of Valencia II.
Steven Williamson
25th April 2025, 5:18
Sponsored by Balenciaga – the racing will be on another planet – Planet Mountain Dew!
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
25th April 2025, 9:01
No citation. Check
El Pollo Loco
25th April 2025, 11:06
lol
PacificPR (@streydt)
24th April 2025, 21:32
Even spending money on the ‘simulation’ seems a waste. Go and spend it on something else and forget about this drab of a track. File under: uninspired and visionless.
Chris Horton
24th April 2025, 22:16
I’m so sick of walls lining the tracks.
Shimks (@shimks)
25th April 2025, 12:21
Agreed.
Colin Spencer
24th April 2025, 22:26
Another featureless virtually flat street circuit. I can’t see this one being that interesting.
David B
24th April 2025, 23:13
A sport that’s been struggling with overtaking for some years now & yet they keep building new tracks that only make overtaking more difficult…
hunocsi (@hunocsi)
24th April 2025, 23:28
Getting Port Imperial vibes from this project.
An Sionnach
24th April 2025, 23:40
Track limits at turn 19. Can’t a new track have no such limits? There are walls everywhere.
Seems similar to the Assetto Corsa track from before, except for they’ve tightened the first chicanes and some other parts, and added the banking. I wondered about that first chicane. It could be done flat out, but missing it could mean hitting the right corner of the wall under the bridge head on, which might not be a survivable crash even in today’s cars. It seemed more fun that it could be done flat out, though!
Jere (@jerejj)
25th April 2025, 13:34
Ikr. Having more than a car width’s worth of space between the concrete & track edge is pointless when the concrete could simply be the hard limit everywhere.
MoogleSlam
25th April 2025, 0:01
Why would they release something so low quality to “promote” this? Someone could have made something 10 times better in an old engine like Assetto Corsa. Plus the driving is terrible.
The track *could* be decent, but I’ll have to do some laps before passing judgement. In the real world, who knows….. it’s all about whether there’s a good chance of overtaking. I guess I’ll say it has potential at this point, but will withhold final judgement until after the race next year.
Le Jimster (@lejimster82)
25th April 2025, 2:02
I’m struggling to see where the overtaking zones are. The track looks narrow. That first chicane looks like an accident magnet. I’m getting Miami vibes and that track isn’t very good either. The only thing mildly interesting is the banked corner which reminds me of Zandvort a bit.
Maybe it’ll have more character in real life, but it seems quite soulless.
hje
25th April 2025, 8:05
This layout is a complete garbage. Drop it and stay in Barcelona while there’s still time to do that.
It’s just ridiculous, we’ve learned sooo much from Tilke designs in the past 30 years, and they created a layout with ridiculous lack of corner-to-corner flow and at the same time, very limited overtaking spots (this might be an exaggeration, as I couldn’t find any reasonable overtaking spots). Pure trash.
It’s giving me a feel like they’ve taken the worst parts of Miami and Sochi, and combined it together.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
25th April 2025, 8:47
Those two chicanes at the beginning of the lap are horrible.
Esmiz (@esmiz)
25th April 2025, 9:24
Another circuit full of walls next to the track and full speed blind corners.
Ferdi
25th April 2025, 9:45
It is soulless. We (race fans) can complain all we (race fans) want but we (race fans) are no longer of interest as a target group for Liberty Media. It’s the short attention span, reality show loving group. Much bigger in size. Size equals revenue. Revenue is the goal.
f1andrea
25th April 2025, 9:54
never seen a presentation track video where the car nearly lost it. It say everything about this absolute no sense race
Webbo (@webbo82)
25th April 2025, 10:11
Great, another Jeddah turn 1-2 run off. That hasn’t caused any issues at all.
/s
Craig
25th April 2025, 10:21
That looks terrible, makes me wonder if they wanted to exploit all the worst parts of current F1 racing.
Matt
25th April 2025, 10:38
It would be great in the new Mario Kart.
Dane
25th April 2025, 11:57
It’s like a mix of Miami and Jeddah with a Zandvoort corner thrown in.
I think I’d rather have the Barcelona track.
Mr A
25th April 2025, 12:38
Looks like Montreal meets Jeddah.
Better than I thought it would be but there are too many chicanes for my tastes.
BenjaminS (@benihana)
25th April 2025, 16:42
Another badly designed track that has so many walls with small sections that will provide outrageous debates on overtaking off track just like the last one. Nothing new, desirable or evocative. Surely there must be a way for folks to be transported to natural circuits to watch F1 or is it that the F1 drama show we now see is only attractive to the Uber Eats crowd and the I need to be seen at an F1 race crowd?
WhackyRacer (@whackyracer)
25th April 2025, 17:22
The hospitality is area is fantastic, the best we’ve ever been invited to and somewhere out there there’s a track that’s in the shape of the local emblem. I think the TV monitors may have been showing it.
StefMeister (@stefmeister)
25th April 2025, 18:36
Circuit De Catalunya may not be the greatest track in the world in terms of ease of overtaking but as a circuit it’s still a billion times better than this.
I used to hear about the prospect of a new circuit and be excited for it yet now I hear it’s yet another street circuit and I see the layout and just roll my eyes at it.
I’m sorry but i’m tired of these street circuits now & i’m just growing increasingly fed up with the general direction Liberty are taking things. And I just honestly really hate been so negative about F1 because I love this sport, Have done since the first time I stumbled across a race broadcast in 1989 but I just look at almost every aspect of it now & honestly feel like most of it is going in the wrong direction.
rpla
26th April 2025, 7:50
Short answer: Super Formula. Top tier single seaters with pure racing, genuine tracks and no nonsense regulations. Anyone disillusioned with F1 (like myself) should take a look
Jimbob
25th April 2025, 21:45
*winces* sort of like Valencia meets Jeddah?
I’ll keep an open mind. Turn 10 is cool, and maybe when real cars are going around it’ll be more engaging?
From a racing perspective I don’t see why you’d drop an Imola or a Zandvoort for this.
AndrewMansell (@andrewmansell)
26th April 2025, 6:27
Not suitable for overtaking. This race has the potential to be boring as hell
Rob (@standbyexp)
27th April 2025, 19:30
I think it’s really good that the Madring is promoting inclusivity so strongly as clearly they employed a blind person to drive this lap.