Madrid’s brand new street circuit was supposed to eat cars alive in its first Formula 1 session. Instead it produced a tidy Mercedes 1-2, a Ferrari recovery story, and something far less glamorous: gridlock. Not the kind that ruins a morning commute, but the kind that ruins a qualifying lap, and by the sound of it, several drivers are already furious about it.
Russell Sets the Pace, Traffic Sets the Tone
George Russell topped opening practice at the Madring, 0.286 seconds clear of championship leader Kimi Antonelli, giving Mercedes a clean sweep of the top two spots on the sport’s first visit to the Spanish capital. Russell arrives in Madrid 66 points adrift of his teammate in the standings, and while one practice session settles nothing, it is at least a marginally happier start to a weekend than the one he had at Monza, where Antonelli’s storming drive from 19th on the grid did most of the damage to Russell’s title hopes.
There were no red flags and no crashes, which on a circuit billed pre-weekend as a genuine “car killer” counts as a minor miracle. There was, however, a yellow flag late in the session, and it turned out to be the least of anyone’s problems. Traffic was the real story of the hour, with drivers repeatedly caught out by rivals dawdling around a lap that offers very little room for error and even less patience for slow-moving obstacles.
As reported by Crash.net, Lewis Hamilton was caught up in three separate incidents, including a near miss with Carlos Sainz‘s Williams through the banked, high-speed La Monumental corner. It is exactly the sort of moment that will keep engineers up at night before qualifying, when a lock-up caused by someone else’s out-lap could be the difference between pole and a scrappy grid slot.
Ferrari’s Compound Trick and a Damaged Power Unit
Ferrari’s session was complicated by circumstance rather than pace. Charles Leclerc finished third and Hamilton fourth, with Leclerc getting the better of his teammate this time round as the Scuderia tries to move on from a Monza weekend it would rather forget. Leclerc is running an older power unit in Madrid, a precaution after the violent Parabolica crash that ended his Italian Grand Prix early and which, as covered in our report on Leclerc’s grid penalty situation, Ferrari managed to navigate without a points deduction.
Both Ferraris also ran a harder compound than the Mercedes duo for parts of the session and still found themselves setting competitive times early on, which says plenty about raw pace even if the eventual gap to Russell tells a different story. Hamilton, for his part, never actually set his fastest lap on the soft tyre that mattered most, his session repeatedly interrupted by the same traffic that frustrated half the field. Whether that costs Ferrari meaningfully by Saturday is impossible to say from one practice hour, but it is not the kind of preparation any team wants heading into a circuit nobody has raced on before.
Verstappen Still Searching, Norris a Second Off
Max Verstappen ended up fifth for Red Bull, over six tenths off Russell’s benchmark, a gap that will not exactly ease the mood after Verstappen’s recent comments about Red Bull no longer being in any kind of title fight this year. He was at least still ahead of reigning champion Lando Norris, who was a full second down on the pace in sixth for McLaren, a sluggish start to the weekend for a driver who has won the last two races on the trot.
Further down the order, Arvid Lindblad gave Racing Bulls something to smile about, outpacing Norris’s teammate Oscar Piastri to finish seventh. Nico Hulkenberg squeezed his Audi into ninth, just 0.010 seconds ahead of Liam Lawson, who rounded out the top ten while filling in for the injured Isack Hadjar at Red Bull. Fernando Alonso, running fifteenth for Aston Martin, brought his car to a stop on track right at the end of the session, a fittingly untidy full stop on an hour that never quite descended into chaos but never fully avoided it either.
FP1 Classification, Spanish Grand Prix
| Pos | Driver | Team | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | George Russell | Mercedes | Fastest |
| 2 | Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | +0.286s |
| 3 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | +0.459s |
| 4 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | +0.543s |
| 5 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing | +0.6xxs |
| 6 | Lando Norris | McLaren | approx. +1.0s |
| 7 | Arvid Lindblad | Racing Bulls | n/a |
| 8 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | n/a |
| 9 | Nico Hulkenberg | Audi | n/a |
| 10 | Liam Lawson | Red Bull Racing | +0.010s to P9 |
A Circuit That Passed the First Test, Barely
The bigger picture here is that Madrid’s debut avoided the disaster scenario. No red flags, no walls hit hard enough to end a session, nothing that forces the FIA into an awkward Friday evening statement. Given the pre-weekend nerves around a track with just two active aero zones and a layout nobody had lapped in anger before this morning, that alone counts as a result.
But the traffic problem is not going away by Saturday. If anything, qualifying will make it worse: tighter margins, more cars trying to find clean air on a track with precious few places to overtake and even fewer to escape a rival dawdling on a slow lap. Russell’s pace was the headline this morning, but the drivers leaving the pit lane muttering about near misses may end up shaping this weekend more than any single lap time does. Qualifying starts at 14:00 UTC on Saturday, check the calendar for your local time, and it would be a surprise if traffic isn’t the first thing mentioned in the driver briefing before it.
