Carlos Sainz has driven the first-ever laps of the Madring, the new Madrid street-and-parkland hybrid circuit that will host its inaugural Spanish Grand Prix in September, and the Williams driver made no attempt to hide what the moment meant to him.
Sainz, who was born in Madrid and karted his way through the city before reaching Formula 1, was given ambassador duties at the venue last year and was handed the keys to a road car for the first shakedown. Lawrence Barretto, who was alongside him in the passenger seat, asked the obvious question.
"You cannot imagine," Sainz said of his excitement at racing in his hometown. "I think it's something very difficult to describe for me because it's something that I always dreamed about — just having the opportunity to race at my hometown. Madrid is a great city, a city that I've always talked well about, a city that now is getting to be known quite a bit more and that now having this Formula 1 track will be amazing."
The Spaniard is no stranger to Madrid's appetite for motorsport. He attended his father's 2004 retirement parade from rallying as a 10-year-old and remembers it vividly.
"I was 10 at the time, and I was surprised how the city welcomed my dad. There was thousands and thousands of people along the main street of Madrid. And that's maybe the first time that I got a taste to realise how much motorsport fans there is in Madrid."
The centrepiece of the new layout is La Monumental, a 24-degree banked corner that runs for almost half a kilometre — the longest single corner in Formula 1.
"Sustained for almost half a kilometre, so 500 metres. This will allow for side-by-side racing, especially to get out of the dirty air," Sainz said. "It's not only a banking, it's also like up-and-down banking. And I think this is going to be epic."
He believes the corner will define the venue's identity. "It's going to be a tube of grandstands all the way around that corner because it's going to be the signature corner of the circuit. So it's going to be grandstands to the left and to the right. I don't think you get that in many places."
Sainz, who has consulted on the layout in his ambassador role, was complimentary about the design team's willingness to go beyond a standard street circuit template.
"They've done a good job with the character because it would have been easy just to fall into a trap of designing more of a standard track, but they've been quite bold," he said. "Pushing the FIA to approve that banking for 500 metres — I think that's quite bold, and I think it's going to create a good showing on camera also."
The loop combines a city-track opening section feeding into a 1km flat-out blast from Turn 2 to Turn 4, a flowing parkland middle sector that Sainz likened to "a bit more of an old-school feel", and an Ifema expo section with Baku-style 90-degree corners. A 700-metre main straight closes the lap.
"What I like about this track is that they went both ways," he said. "They went to the very open, very flowing track and then back into a tight area again."
No other driver has asked him for setup tips yet. "Not yet. Not yet," Sainz smiled. "But maybe they will."
Source: youtube.com