The worst F1 race of 2026 - why Madring got it so wrong

The Spanish Grand Prix at the new Madring circuit combined two key elements to deliver an underwhelming spectacle on Sunday: car rules not designed for the drivers, and a track not designed for the spectators.

The end result was possibly the worst race of the 2026 Formula 1 season, with barely any action.

The top three drivers crossed the finish line less than five seconds apart, and not even that managed to make for an exciting finish as there was never a real prospect that the order would change; overtaking proved pretty much impossible at the new Madrid venue.

On paper, the race results could read like a grandstand finish.

In reality, it was three drivers just circulating nose-to-tail for lap after lap with no way through.

The race’s single moment of jeopardy was a pit-entry miscue under a VSC. After that, nothing but a long wait to see if another stoppage would trigger a safety car and create some sort of tension.

That gap between the initial hype and the resulting spectacle is the whole story of Madring’s opening weekend

A track that punishes anyone who tries

Drivers and fans alike had warned that the circuit’s layout looked like a recipe for exactly what happened on Sunday, and struggled to understand how the powers that be didn’t see it coming and react accordingly.

Lando Norris was the most direct in his post-race assessment: “I don’t know how someone looks at this design and goes, ‘Mint!’ To me, it’s not a great racetrack.”

The reigning champion pointed to the run of blind, narrow esses through the 260-270km/h middle sector as both unappealing to watch and, in his view, a safety concern given how little margin they leave.

Audi‘s Gabriel Bortoleto, asked if the race had been as dull to drive as it looked from the outside, didn’t dress it up either: “I almost fell asleep as well.”

The specifics of what went wrong were consistent across the paddock.

Several corners force drivers to brake and turn the steering wheel at the same time rather than in sequence, which leaves only one usable line through them and makes it trivially easy to defend for the car in front.

Verstappen zeroed in on that flaw ahead of the weekend, saying the braking zones need to stop combining with direction change if the track is ever going to allow a move.

The chicane after the pit straight, originally billed as the main overtaking zone, fell into the same trap: its awkward entry made it far harder to attack into than intended.

Further round the lap, Norris wanted two of the tighter, more pointless corners in the closing sector removed altogether and replaced with something wider.

Even La Monumental — the banked corner Madring had pitched as its signature feature — turned out to be a non-event in racing terms.

Fernando Alonso deflated the hype around it himself, joking that his own press officer at Aston Martin could have taken it flat out.

The corner was never really designed as a passing opportunity in itself, but as a set-up for the braking zone that follows.

On Sunday, even that promise went unfulfilled, because nobody was close enough to use it as the corner exhausted the cars’ batteries before reaching Turn 13.

Cars that cannot follow, tyres that cannot fall off

The layout was only half (well, more like 80% of) the problem.

Formula 1 arrived in Madrid braced for chaos. The Madring had been labelled a “car killer” before a wheel had turned, and Saturday’s support races delivered some of that kind of carnage, with a car catching fire after contact with the wall in F2 practice, and a first-lap pile-up in the Formula 3 race.

The senior category, though, produced the opposite.

Once the field sorted itself out after the start, nobody could get close enough to anybody else to attempt a pass.

Part of that is simply what these cars do to the air around them, but Madring’s specific problem was compounded by tyres that never gave the field a reason to fight.

With next to no degradation or graining across the weekend, there was little incentive to attack a rival on old rubber or defend against one on fresh rubber.

When tyre life stops varying enough to create different strategies worth fighting over, drivers settle into their own bubble and wait for the pitstops to sort the order out for them.

With any luck, a safety car helps their cause, as was the hope of Charles Leclerc, who waited forever to make his pitstop from first.

The wait was in vain, though, but the fact that he managed to stay in the lead for so long without rivals not even having to worry about strategy considerations said a lot about the race.

A faster, less glamorous Monaco

Strip away the hybrid street-and-permanent-road layout and Madring is, in essence, a quicker version of Monaco: tight, unforgiving, hemmed in by walls, built for a spectacular lap rather than a spectacular race.

Monaco has survived decades of exactly that criticism because it has something that is not measured by the stopwatch – the history, the prestige, the sense that a win there means more than a win almost anywhere else.

Madring has none of that, and it’s partly why drivers and fans alike were so harsh in their post-weekend assessment: no one wants another Monaco.

Madring’s backdrop is a ring of exhibition pavilions and construction sites rather than a harbour and a hillside, and its first race did nothing to suggest it will grow into the kind of event that earns forgiveness for a lack of action.

Monaco gets a pass because of what it is. Madring, on this evidence, will have to earn one by implementing the changes already being discussed.

Spain already had a Formula 1 home in Barcelona, a circuit with its own well-documented overtaking problems but also decades of history, a permanent fixture teams know intimately, and one that remained on the calendar this year regardless.