Madrid’s new F1 venue is already one of the most unconventional tracks on the calendar – the Madring is effectively split into two distinct halves by the M-11 motorway, with the southern portion built around the existing IFEMA exhibition halls and the northern section constructed on previously undeveloped land.
But the people running the place are already thinking about how to make it stranger. The layout is not set in stone, with the Spanish Grand Prix contracted to run at the venue through 2035.
That long runway gives the circuit’s operators room to experiment, and one idea on the table would make the Madring genuinely unprecedented in F1 history.
“We can also consider having the track inside the exhibition halls,” said track chief operating officer Carlos Jimenez to The Race. “It’s something that Formula E does in London, in the ExCel [Centre], and we are thinking about it here.”
The London ExCel comparison isn’t a throwaway comment from the executive. Formula E’s indoor/outdoor hybrid through the London docklands venue has been a fixture on that championship’s calendar for years, demonstrating that racing machinery can transition between open air and enclosed ***** e in a single lap. The logic is the same here. The IFEMA halls already sit directly alongside the circuit’s southern sector, so threading the track through them would be a matter of evolution rather than reinvention.
But the people running the place are already thinking about how to make it stranger. The layout is not set in stone, with the Spanish Grand Prix contracted to run at the venue through 2035.
That long runway gives the circuit’s operators room to experiment, and one idea on the table would make the Madring genuinely unprecedented in F1 history.
“We can also consider having the track inside the exhibition halls,” said track chief operating officer Carlos Jimenez to The Race. “It’s something that Formula E does in London, in the ExCel [Centre], and we are thinking about it here.”
The London ExCel comparison isn’t a throwaway comment from the executive. Formula E’s indoor/outdoor hybrid through the London docklands venue has been a fixture on that championship’s calendar for years, demonstrating that racing machinery can transition between open air and enclosed ***** e in a single lap. The logic is the same here. The IFEMA halls already sit directly alongside the circuit’s southern sector, so threading the track through them would be a matter of evolution rather than reinvention.
3 months ago
