Carlos Sainz Warns F1’s New Madrid Circuit Is Set for ‘Safety Cars, Red Flags and Yellow Flags’

• Formula 1 races for the first time at Madrid’s new Madring circuit this weekend, a street track with 22 corners and almost no straights
• Carlos Sainz, who helped design the track’s banked Turn 12, predicts safety cars, red flags and yellow flags across the weekend
• Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, the only other drivers with experience of the circuit, both describe it as a serious test for anyone who gets it wrong

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The Track Carlos Sainz Helped Build Could Now Decide His Season

Formula 1 arrives in Madrid this weekend for a race with no history and almost no precedent. The Spanish Grand Prix has left its long-time home at Barcelona for a brand-new street circuit called the Madring, and the driver who knows it best is not one of the championship contenders but Williams’ Carlos Sainz, who worked directly with track designers on its standout corner.

Formula 3 drivers who tested the circuit last month described it as “Jeddah on steroids,” a comparison to one of the most demanding tracks already on the calendar. That test produced 19 red flags across two days, though not all of them followed crashes. It is the clearest signal yet of what this weekend might look like.

A Lap With Almost No Room to Breathe

The Madring runs 3.365 miles around Madrid’s IFEMA exhibition centre, officially listed at 22 corners, though the layout includes a Turn 5A and Turn 20A that make the true number closer to 24. After the start-finish straight, drivers are rarely off the steering wheel for long. The opening chicane at Turns 1 and 2 offers one of the few clear overtaking chances thanks to a heavy braking zone, before a long flat-out run through Turns 3 and 4 toward what could rank among the most awkward chicanes in Formula 1, drawing comparisons to Singapore’s old “Sling” complex, last used between 2008 and 2012.

Turn 5 will decide how much of that straight-line speed can survive into the next section. There is not enough width for two cars to run side by side through the corner, which means any driver who arrives there level with a rival is taking a genuine risk. After that, the track climbs into an uphill braking zone at Turn 7 where cars are expected to brush the outside barriers, then flicks left, right and left through a sequence that could run flat out once the racing line has rubbered in.

La Monumental, the Corner Sainz Helped Shape

The signature corner is Turn 12, a banked hairpin nicknamed La Monumental that turns 180 degrees at a 24 per cent gradient, or roughly 13.5 degrees. Drivers will try to stay on the throttle through the full turn while absorbing heavy G-forces from the banking. Sainz, who serves as a Madring ambassador, gave input on the corner’s design specifically so track designers could keep it safe without stripping out what makes it unique.

Leclerc, one of only two current grid drivers besides Hamilton and Sainz to have driven the circuit, expects it to test nerve as much as skill. “It’s a very, very special corner,” he said. “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. And so that’s going to be really cool, I think. It’s going to be a really cool corner. I do believe it can become one of the most iconic corners of the season, especially once the grandstand will be built. I think that will add also to the experience of that corner.”

Hamilton’s Warning From a Dusty Filming Day

Leclerc and Hamilton got their first look at the circuit on a filming day in July, when the track had only just finished construction. The conditions were rough. “As you would expect, there was no grip,” Hamilton said. “So your tyres were basically just covered in dust, and that’s the whole time. 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.”

Hamilton’s read on the track lines up with what most of the paddock expects: a circuit where grid position counts for more than usual, given how few places there are to pass, and where the smallest mistake on a qualifying lap can end a session against the barriers rather than in the gravel. After the final corner, a 90-degree right-hander where the inside barriers jut into the racing line, the exit onto the main straight leaves little margin for cutting the apex.

Why Everyone Expects Red Flags

Sainz has driven enough new-generation street tracks to know the pattern by now. “Looking at the track and hearing of what happened in the F3 test, I think we are all expecting safety cars, red flags and yellow flags in qualy and things like this,” he said. “It has been a fashion or a tendency of Formula 1 to go to these kind of tracks like Jeddah, Baku recently that are closer to the city, and Miami, but they have more walls and we haven’t had any issues with it. The races actually seem to be going quite well to every place we’ve gone, so it’s that similar trend we’re going towards.”

He drew a direct comparison to three of the tracks he rates among the sport’s toughest. “I think definitely with the way they’ve put the barriers and the design of the track it’s going to be one of the biggest challenges in Formula 1 recently,” Sainz said. “The track reminds me a lot of Jeddah, it reminds me a lot of Baku, even reminds me a bit of Macau in some ways. So having that in an F1 car with 1,000 horsepower is going to be quite an interesting challenge, so let’s see how it goes.”

A Track That Could Reward the Wrong Kind of Car

Kimi Antonelli arrives in Madrid off the back of his win at Monza, but a corner-heavy layout like the Madring is not obviously suited to any one car on the grid. The closest recent comparisons are the Hungaroring and Zandvoort, both won this year by McLaren’s Lando Norris, which hints that a car strong through the corners rather than down the straights could have the advantage. McLaren and Ferrari will both be looking to take momentum back from Mercedes on a track where nobody has meaningful data.

What is not in question is the risk. Every driver who has spoken about the Madring so far, whether they have turned a wheel on it or only watched the F3 test from the pit wall, has arrived at the same conclusion: this is a track that will punish the smallest error at the highest speed, on a weekend where the championship contenders can least afford one.

Practice on Friday will count for more than usual at a typical race weekend. Drivers are learning the layout for the first time, and every lap they bank is genuine new information rather than a refresher. With so little margin for error and so few overtaking opportunities once the race begins, the teams that use those two practice sessions to build genuine confidence in the car will start Saturday’s qualifying with a real advantage. Get it wrong, and there could be no second chance to find the right set-up before Sunday.

Nobody, not the drivers, not the engineers, and not the team principals, can say with real confidence how Sunday’s race will unfold on a track this new. That uncertainty alone is what makes this weekend impossible to predict.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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