Spanish Grand Prix 2026: Can football-obsessed Madrid embrace F1?
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‘It started as a joke, a fantasy’ – F1 heads to football-obsessed Madrid
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Figure caption:
45 year wait: F1 returns to Madrid
By Matt Warwick, BBC Sport Senior Journalist in Madrid
Published 13 minutes ago
You could never accuse Formula 1 of shirking a challenge. Who else would consider competing for the attention of a football-obsessed country, home to the World Cup winners, in a city where a constant stream of the world’s most talented players do awe-inspiring things most weeks?
F1 last had a Spanish world champion 20 years ago and there hasn’t been a race in Madrid since 1981. Does F1, which has experienced a huge rise in popularity in other territories around the world, need another track in its crowded European heartland? This weekend the sport, and Madrid itself, will find out.
Madrilenos know how to make sport great
Real Madrid are considered to be the greatest football club in history. They have won 15 European Cups and 36 La Liga titles, and then there are the famous Galacticos: the generational set of the world’s best players which began with the likes of Zinedine Zidane and Ronaldo and has extended to the modern crop that includes Jude Bellingham and Kylian Mbappe.
Some 75,000 Madridistas roared home Mbappe’s majestically deft volley to make it 3-0 after half an hour against Malaga at the end of August, and their city rivals Atletico aren’t far adrift of them in La Liga. It’s hard to see what else the locals need to sate their sporting needs.
But in both the stunning, newly reconditioned steel spaceship of the Bernabeu, which has lost none of the drama of its frighteningly steep theatrical terracing, or Real Madrid women’s atmospheric if less salubrious stadium right next to the new F1 track, will fans be turning their attention to the roar of the engine noise this weekend?
"Yes, [the F1 race] is good for Madrid," says one. "There is pride in our sport, Madrid is an open city with open people and open minds. The race can [take] Madrid’s [identity] outside of football, and the most we can be seen [by the outside world] is the best. But I’m more than excited… I want to see how it goes."
"We’ve always been dreaming of having something [from F1] closer to home," adds another. "Having it back is great. I’ve been to Barcelona and the Belgian GP and I think let’s see how it goes. Organising tends to be messy in the first year – I don’t want to be the guinea pig. Let’s hope it brings the city more into the spotlight. Madrid has a lot to learn from F1 about how to run a global spectacle; F1 could probably learn the true Spanish way. Barcelona is more international, the drivers and fans coming to Madrid will get more of a taste of Spain."
