'The most risky circuit of the calendar': Will Madring live up to reputation as F1 car killer?

MADRID -- The opening day of track running at the all-new Madring got off to an ominous start. Thirty minutes into the first Formula 2 practice session of the weekend, Thai racer Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak lost control of his car through the high-speed Turn 18 and crashed hard into the barriers lining the corner exit. As Inthraphuvasak, uninjured in the accident, undid his belts and prized himself free of the cockpit, the rear of the car burst into flames and the practice session had to be suspended. Four further session-stopping crashes followed during F2 qualifying later the same day, cementing the belief that the Madring will earn its pre-event reputation as something of a "car killer." "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, and the walls are very close," Mercedes driver George Russell said ahead of track running on Thursday. "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 tires 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." Formula 1's two Friday practice sessions got away with just one red flag -- when Arvid Lindblad crashed his Racing Bulls at Turn 13 -- but it seems likely more will follow before the end of Sunday's 57-lap race. With the production of spare parts limited by F1's cost cap, drivers up and down the grid were reminded on Friday of the importance of building up their confidence before the opportunity to put it all on the line in qualifying. "We have told all our drivers to be conservative to start with, but I think the pace will ramp up, the grip will ramp up, and we'll get closer to the walls, more aggressive over the kerbs, and then we will see who is the first victim," Aston Martin's chief trackside officer Mike Krack said after first practice. "These drivers, they are instructed to go to the limit. They are competitive. They want to go over the limit, or to the limit, and sometimes you go over and then you have to live with that. "But at the end of the day, we're not here to go around in procession. We're here to race. And to go racing, you need to take risks. Sometimes you go over. That's part of the game." Although it was the high-speed sections toward the end of the lap that were resulting in the biggest accidents, Turn 5 in the first sector stood out as one of the more consistent mistake generators. The tight chicane follows a flat-out run from Turn 3 but is complicated by a curved braking zone as the cars come through Turn 4. Braking on the limit while cornering in an F1 car is a delicate operation and resulted in numerous cars locking a front tire and cutting Turn 5 during Friday practice. For qualifying, it could prove a test of both driver commitment and suspension compliance, with the temptation to take as much kerb as possible in order to manufacturer the straightest line through the chicane. "I mean that Turn 5, 6, I hope there's a rhythm to it and it's actually not that bad," Williams driver Alex Albon said on Thursday after driving the track in the simulator earlier in the week. "I think there's an angle there that you're going to just send it 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." After Turns 5 and 6, the track enters a tunnel under the M-11 motorway -- one of the major traffic arteries in and out of Madrid -- before the cars emerge in the "North Zone" of the Madring. Unlike the "South Zone," which mainly consists of right-angle corners picking a route around the IFEMA Exhibition Center, the "North Zone" has been landscaped by the circuit's architects to feature a series undulating and flowing corners. More than a million cubic meters of earth -- enough to fill 500 Olympic swimming pools -- were moved to create the desired topography, transforming the nature of the lap from a street circuit to a purpose-built race track. The first challenge for the drivers in the "North Zone" is Turn 7 and Turn 8, named El Bunker in deference to two Spanish Civil War machine-gun placements at the top of the hill. Built in 1936 by Republican forces, the two concrete bunkers formed part of the defensive lines protecting Madrid, and their preservation was one of the conditions for the circuit's construction. History aside, El Bunker provides a fascinating vantage point for spectators as the cars travel uphill to a tricky right/left chicane and then plunge down through Turn 9 to the much faster sequence of Turns 10 and 11. The main purpose for the latter chicane is to limit the cars' speed ahead of the circuit's signature corner, La Monumental. The banked corner has a 24% gradient and extends for more than half a kilometer as it wraps nearly 270 degrees round to the right. As well as banking, the corner changes elevation mid corner, dipping down from the entry to its lowest point before rising again to a blind exit. Either side of the track, temporary grandstands tower over the circuit, creating a cauldron-like atmosphere similar to the stadium section at Mexico City or the pit straight at Interlagos. Although not quite as spectacular as La Monumental, a series of fast corners follow in quick succession, with close walls creating a series of blind spots from the cockpit. The lack of visibility was among the biggest concerns among drivers ahead of the weekend, with Albon describing the final half of the lap as a "souped-up Jeddah." Picking a racing line through the corners sounds like an exercise in blind faith as drivers have to trust the track is clear beyond their restricted sightline. "If you think about these long, long corners, there's no apex point and a lot of the corners, if you look at the way the track is, they're late apexes, so you're swinging in from a blind spot and you've got to kind of try and pick an imaginary spot that's a few hundred meters in front of you," Albon added. "That's really challenging to do it as a driver. You almost have to rely on repetition and muscle memory just to get that timing right because you basically can't see an apex, so now you're just using your internal body clock and you're trying to focus on a reference point or something to know what's your apex point of that corner." The other major question mark over the circuit is its ability to provide exciting racing on Sunday. The racing line between the barriers looks even narrower in person than it does on TV, and the curved braking zones into Turns 5 and 17 only add to the challenge of making a move stick on corner entry. "It's a shame in a way because I think the layout is OK, but there are some features of the circuit which naturally deter overtaking," Haas driver Oliver Bearman said. "One of them is the braking for Turn 5, which is curved -- and that's the real overtaking opportunity. That kind of curved braking takes away any possibility of different lines and sending one up the inside. So that's a shame and maybe a bit of an oversight, but it means that we're going to be fully focused on qualifying." Alpine's Pierre Gasly gave a more optimistic analysis of the overtaking opportunities, but couldn't deny it would be a struggle. "It's going to be a first for everybody in terms of overtaking opportunities, because we haven't seen any overtaking, we don't know any overtakes," he said. "Everybody's talking about Turn 5, but then we'll have to improvise and kind of be creative on race day and see what's possible. "We'll be the creators of these first moves. So yeah, it's all very exciting and I'm looking forward to this challenge." The first laps of Madring may be done and dusted, but the remainder of the Spanish Grand Prix still promises to be a voyage into the unknown.