Practice begins Friday, and every garage on the pit lane starts from zero. The Madring’s 22 corners have never been raced on. There are no qualifying laps, no race stints, and no comparable telemetry to work from. Every setup call rests on simulator work, and every mistake in FP1 hands rivals free information.
Kimi Antonelli and George Russell head the field into that vacuum. The Mercedes pair sit 1-2 in the drivers’ championship, with Antonelli 66 points clear of his teammate after winning at Monza from 19th on the grid. It is a lead the Italian could stretch on Sunday, or see cut in half.
Antonelli’s 66-point cushion, built at Monza
Antonelli’s Italian Grand Prix win was one of the more improbable in recent memory. Serving a 30-place engine penalty, he started 19th, climbed the order after a red-flag restart, and passed Russell late to take the flag by 3.857 seconds. Max Verstappen brought his Red Bull home third, 14.718 seconds behind the winner.
The standings after Monza read Antonelli on 267, Russell on 201, then Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, and Verstappen further back. Madrid is where Antonelli either loosens Russell’s grip on the title fight, or hands his teammate a route back in.
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Ferrari’s bet: Madrid should suit the SF-26 better
Ferrari arrives at the Madring desperate for a reset. Leclerc’s SF-26 snapped through Parabolica on the second lap and was written off against the barriers, drawing the red flag. Hamilton finished sixth after the restart. Team principal Fred Vasseur told reporters afterwards that the factory would turn the page immediately.
“Tomorrow morning back at the factory we will prepare Madrid, and we’ll come to Madrid with all the energy that we need to do a good result,” Vasseur said.
He also believes the layout itself suits the SF-26 better than Monza did.
“The layout of the track is probably fitting a bit more with what we have today, and we can expect a bit more next week,” the Frenchman said.
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Monza punished Ferrari’s straight-line deficit. The Madring, 5.416km packed with 22 corners around the IFEMA complex in north-east Madrid, rewards downforce and mechanical grip.
A circuit that has already broken F3
The Madring is Formula 1’s first race in the Spanish capital since Jarama in 1981. Its debut weekend follows a Formula 3 test earlier this year that produced 19 red flags across two days, with 11 of the stoppages coming from barrier contact and drivers comparing sections of the layout to Monaco and Macau.
That is the field engineers and drivers are walking into cold. Free Practice 1 gets underway on Friday, September 11. Qualifying is on Saturday. The race runs on Sunday, September 13.
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