BarcelonaOne week ago, the Minister of the Presidency, Interior and Justice of the Community of Madrid, Enrique López, sent a letter to Stefano Domenicali, CEO of Formula 1, in which he stated his desire to “be able to organize a Formula 1 GP” , insisted on the potential of Madrid as a hub of business and tourism, and announced that his institution showed “the greatest interest in bringing Formula 1 to Madrid.”
The news has been a small time bomb in the world of the Spanish competition engine, but also in political circles in the state. And it is that the announcement of Enrique López –which in the end is nothing more than an announcement of intentions– seems to collide with the contractual reality with the FIA and with Formula 1: already a few months ago the same Domenicali ratified the agreement to continue celebrating the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya until 2026. The current agreement with the Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona, signed by the Minister of Business of the Generalitat and president of the Circuit consortium, Roger Torrent, and by the director of the Circuit, Josep Maria Santamaría, a few months ago he paid special attention to a “mutual commitment to continue advancing in sustainability and turn Montmeló into a model for other facilities of this type in terms of ‘environmental impact and in adaptation of the infrastructures to the exigencias of the climatic emergency ”. Sources from the Circuit de Catalunya consulted by this newspaper decline to make any assessment of the possible Formula 1 Grand Prix in Madrid, beyond celebrating the five-season renewal of the Spanish Grand Prix, which will continue to be held in Montmeló until 2026.
The project to hold a Formula 1 GP in Madrid also does not have the complicity of the main Spanish sports federations. In fact, the head of communications of the Royal Spanish Motoring Federation (RFEDA), Laura Martín, assured this newspaper: “We know nothing about it, we have no knowledge of it, and anything we say would be an invention.” . At this time it is difficult to imagine that a top-level car competition can be held without the support of the main Spanish sports federation, but the fact that the government of the Community of Madrid has not even contacted the RFEDA partly explains the lack of concretion of the project announced by Enrique López. In fact, the mayor of Madrid himself, the popular José Luis Martínez-Almeida, declared three days after the announcement of the letter from the government of the Community of Madrid that the project to hold a Formula 1 Grand Prix was still “ a very embryonic idea ”.
The unknown of a new circuit
The other point that squeaks in the letter signed by Enrique López is the fact that Madrid currently does not have an approved circuit to host Formula 1 races, or even MotoGP. It is true that the Jarama Circuit hosted some Formula 1 events in the 1980s and is immersed in a process of renovation of its facilities, but now the physical impossibility to continue growing and extending the main straight of the track makes it impossible for it to host races in the premier category of motorsport. To all this we must add that the Jarama has serious problems of accessibility and poor public transport connections (it can only be accessed by car or bus), which congests the motorway attached to the facilities on days of a lot of influx.
In recent days, the circuit project to be built in the town of Morata de Tajuña, in the southeast of the community and about 40 kilometers from the center of Madrid, has gained some notoriety. This project has the approval of the City of Morata de Tajuña, which a few months ago announced on Twitter an agreement with the company Stream Motor Fire to build a modern circuit, capable of hosting Formula 1 races and MotoGP, but at the moment does not have the financial muscle needed to build it. The person in charge of building and managing this circuit would be the same company Stream Motor Fire, set up in 2016 in Almeria and specialized in sporting events, but which is not very well known and which so far has not managed any large facilities of these characteristics. The communication managers of the Tajuña Circuit and the company Stream Motor Fire did not want to answer ARA’s questions.
There is still a third possibility, confirmed by the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, who would use the area of the Ifema fairgrounds and exhibitions to fit an urban circuit that was only used occasionally during the weeks of Grand Prix and disassembled once the race was held. This option, which would also have been considered by the government of the Community of Madrid, seems almost ruled out, as the organization of Formula 1 is increasingly refractory to urban circuits, and especially because of the bad memory – still alive in memory – of the European GP which was held on the urban circuit of Valencia between 2008 and 2012 and which ended up being a financial mess. In fact, some information and preliminary studies indicated that the cost of holding a weekend of racing on the urban circuit projected to Ifema would be about 200 million euros per year, a stratospheric figure that limits the options.
Only one Grand Prix in each state
If Madrid really wants to host a Formula 1 Grand Prix, they will have to wait at least until 2027, when the current contract signed by Domenicali and the Circuit de Catalunya expires. And it is that the current policy of international expansion of the FIA follows the pattern “a state, a Grand Prix”, especially in the Old Continent, where the great circus of motorsport has not yet fully recovered from the failures of Valencia or Germany, where races are no longer held at either the Hockenheim or the Nürburgring.
In fact, Formula 1 could also end up losing the races of Paul Ricard (GP of France) and the legendary Spa-Francorchamps (GP of Belgium), which end their contract in the not too distant future, and replace them with races to emerging powers like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, China, Singapore or Abu Dhabi, all very recent GPs who pay fees to organize races often much higher than European circuits. Without going any further, the aforementioned circuits pay fees (an amount that the organization of Formula 1 is pocketed to organize a Grand Prix) in excess of $ 50 million per year, while European circuits (Imola, Silverstone , Spa or the Circuit de Catalunya itself) pay less than half, around $ 22 million. No one escapes, however, that if he wanted to enter the great circus of Formula 1, in Madrid he would have to pay a higher fee, at the height of what new circuits such as Baku (Azerbaijan), Shanghai currently pay. (China) or Lusail (Qatar).
