'It started as a joke, a fantasy' - F1 heads to football-obsessed Madrid — SkimNews
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- Formula 1 will race in Madrid this weekend for the first time since 1981, staging a grand prix on a new street circuit dubbed "Madring" near the Ifema exhibition area beside the city's airport.
- Luis Garcia Abad, former manager to Spain's only world champion Fernando Alonso, leads the Madring project and said organisers signed a 10-year contract with F1 after years of discussions.
- Madring features 22 corners including "Monumental," a 26-degree banked turn that Abad says is substantially longer than Zandvoort's banking and was designed to hold more than 30,000 spectators around a single corner.
- Madrid's Ifema operations director Carlos Jimenez said the track cost 85 million euros with an additional 65 million euros invested in surrounding construction, built during what he called the wettest winter in 20 years in Spain using renewable energy.
- Local fans quoted in the piece expressed mixed feelings, with one calling the race good for Madrid's identity beyond football while another cautioned that "organising tends to be messy in the first year" and didn't want to "be the guinea pig."
- Real Madrid dominates the city's sporting identity with 15 European Cups and 36 La Liga titles, and the Bernabeu's reconditioned stadium sits near the new F1 track alongside the Real Madrid women's team ground.
Why it matters: F1 is committing to a decade-long Madrid presence in a city where football already commands intense loyalty, betting 150 million euros in combined construction and track costs that a new street circuit with a signature 26-degree bank can carve out room alongside Real Madrid and Atletico. The track's narrow layout and overtaking concerns raise early questions about whether the spectacle can match the on-track drama that Madrid's football culture delivers weekly.
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