MADRID -- Formula 1 drivers have predicted multiple crashes and red flags at this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix after getting their first glimpse of the new Madring circuit.
The hybrid street circuit based around Madrid’s IFEMA exhibition centre has already caught the attention of a number of drivers after they completed laps in the virtual world on their team’s simulators in the build-up to the race weekend.
The combination of high-speed corners -- including the 24-degree banked Turn 12, named La Monumental -- unforgiving walls, and curved braking zones presents one of the more unusual challenges on the F1 calendar.
Questions were raised about the layout of the circuit after a recent two-day Formula 3 test resulted in 19 red flags due to crashes and incidents.
Mercedes driver George Russell was initially shocked by that statistic, but then he drove a lap of the Madring on his team’s simulator.
“I heard about the 19 red flags in F3 and I was a bit surprised,” he said. “And then, after I drove it on the sim, I was surprised there were only 19 red flags. So, it’s a crazy circuit.
“I would put it, arguably, as the most risky circuit of the whole calendar, because you have real high-speed corners, sort of Jeddah-esque. The walls are very close. There’s no margin for error.
“But then, you have other corners that are quite like Baku, where you’re coming from a high speed into a slow braking zone. You’re braking and turning at the same time.
“So, locking tyres is going to be easy. If you’re not coping, you’ll be straight in the wall.
“I think it’s going to be really challenging for us as drivers. The race is going to be challenging to overtake. So, on the whole, it’s not an easy one.”
Pierre Gasly expects the Madring’s reputation for session-stopping crashes to continue into the F1 race weekend after he hit a number of the walls during his session in Alpine’s simulator.
“I’ll put my money on the red flag, that’s for sure. Driving-wise, I must say in the sim it was very enjoyable and very exciting.
“I got a good read and feel of pretty much every single wall at every single corner, so I should know what to do and what not to do.
“I expect a very tricky track, challenging for us, which makes it good because you can always aim to do a bit more difference driving-wise. But again, it’s a type of track a bit like Monaco, where I think if you do a slight mistake, it can have big consequences straight away, so it’s about how you can reward every single braking zone and the speed that you carry through the corners.
“I must say it’s exciting, but at the same time I think it’s going to be quite a disruptive weekend, how easy it will be to have a crash.”
One concern raised by Williams driver Alex Albon on Thursday was the amount of blind corners around the circuit.
The exit of the high-speed La Monumental has already been noted as a section of track where speeds are high and visibility into the next corner is limited.
“It’s an interesting track, there’s a lot of high speed corners, a lot of blind corners -- it gives me vibes of Macau [the famous street F3 street circuit], but more for an F1 track,” Albon said.
“It’s a little bit concerning, the blind spots in some of the corners, like if there is a car that’s stopped on the other side of the corner, I hope they’re just quick on the VSCs [Virtual Safety Cars] and the red flags. Inevitably there are going to be a few crashes this weekend.”
Albon also raised concerns about the difficulty of overtaking into some of the braking zones, which are curved into Turn 5, Turn 8 and Turn 17.
“I wish they did something a bit different with the braking zones and not having them too much angled,” he added. “You’ve got a lot of combined corners, which just thinking of overtaking on Sunday, it feels like it’s quite easy to defend. You just put the car in the middle of the track and you’re not going to get a car that’s going to go past you.
“That just means that it will be more of a [battery] deployment overtake than a braking overtake. But yeah, it will be challenging.”
Albon also predicted there would be a temptation to take extra risks into the Turn 5 and 6 chicane in qualifying to gain lap time.
“I mean that Turn 5, 6, I hope there’s a rhythm to it and it’s actually not that bad, but I think there’s an angle there that you’re going to just send it,” he said.
“And if you get through the other side, you’re going to be two or three tenths [of a second] quicker. And if you don’t want to take that risk, you lose out on those few tenths.”
