F1 gets a new venue on 13 September, when the Spanish Grand Prix moves from Barcelona to a 5.4km, 22-corner layout built around the IFEMA exhibition centre in north-east Madrid. Ferrari has already been there. On 9 July the team ran an SF-26 at the Madring on a promotional filming day, making Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton the first drivers to put a current car on the track. Their verdicts do not entirely match.
Hamilton, speaking to media at Spa the following week, played down what Ferrari actually learned and was blunt about what the layout looked like from the cockpit.
"We only had a few laps, so it was very dusty for new circuit. As you would expect, there was no grip. So, your tyres were basically just covered in dust, and that's the whole time," he said.
The warning came next. "It looks like it will be a qualifying lap sort of circuit, and there's not really any straights. So, it looks like a difficult place to overtake."
That is a pointed observation for a season already fighting a reputation problem over racing quality under the 2026 rules. Hamilton did call it a "cool experience" to be first onto a new F1 track.
"It's a very, very special corner. It's a corner where I feel in qualifying, we'll have to - I will say it in a polite way - but we'll have to be very brave because it's going to be on the limit," Leclerc said.
He expects it to define the venue: "And yes, I do believe it can become one of the most iconic corners of the season, especially once the grandstand will be built. And I think that will add also to the experience of that corner."
On whether it suits him, Leclerc hedged in a way Hamilton did not. "Can it fit my driving style? I mean, I like city tracks in general. So I have little doubts I will love MadRing. Whether it will fit me or not, I don't really know. But one thing for sure is that you'll have to go full commitment."
The more contentious question is why Ferrari got there first at all. The Race's Jon Noble set out the mechanics: the run was classified as a Promotional Event, of which teams get two a year, capped at 200km and restricted to filming-day tyres. Ferrari had already used one at Monza in April. Crucially, the alternative route - running an older car under the Testing of Previous Cars rules - is closed at brand-new venues, so the filming day was the only way in. The regulations have since been tightened further for 2027 to bar TPC running at circuits absent from the calendar for two years.
Noble's assessment was that even a dusty 200km matters more than usual this season, because grip levels through corners feed directly into energy management under the current power unit rules - and because nobody yet knows what La Monumental does to ride heights and vertical loads. That sits awkwardly against Hamilton's line that there "wasn't much to learn". The run was organised and paid for by the promoter, who invited Ferrari to inaugurate the circuit and covered the costs.
The other open question is whether the place will be finished. Construction has run alongside an F1 calendar slot for over a year, with roughly 75 per cent of the 5.4km purpose-built and the remainder on public roads, at a cost of around 70 million pounds. Organisers have been firm in public. Madring chief operations officer Carlos Jimenez laid out the timeline directly.
"We are in our 11th month of construction and the permits took 12. Now the most complicated part, even apart from the track, has been done. In the south, the track is done," Jimenez said.
Circuit organisers, quoted by Soy Motor, went further: "The work is completely on schedule. There is no concern whatsoever regarding the deadlines, and the Grand Prix will be held on the planned dates."
The track surface has been laid and signed off by the FIA, with garages, paddock buildings, grandstands and hospitality the remaining work. Local opposition has not gone away - residents have protested over noise, environmental impact and the use of public money - and the circuit was not FIA-homologated at the time of Ferrari's run.
What is not in doubt is the demand. The inaugural race has effectively sold out while the venue is still a building site. Whether it produces racing or a procession is the part Hamilton has already flagged, and the answer arrives on 13 September.
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