Madrid’s new street beast didn’t bite Liam Lawson. It just bared its teeth.
On a day when the Madring’s concrete walls, blind apexes and long, tyre-shredding corners threatened to punish anyone even slightly off-line, Lawson walked away with something more valuable than headlines: two clean sessions, two top-10 finishes, and a growing sense he belongs in the thick of Red Bull’s operation.
Twice he finished P10. Twice he sat around eight-tenths of a second behind Max Verstappen in the senior Red Bull. No drama. No damage. No heroics, either – but that was never the brief.
“On a track like this, you want to have as much time on track as possible,” he said beforehand, and he drove like a man who meant it. No flirting with the walls, no late-braking gambles. Just laps. Lots of them.
On familiar, flowing circuits like Monza, Lawson pointed out, drivers can afford to lean on long runs and setup experiments. Madrid is the opposite. New asphalt, a hybrid layout, and the constant threat of a small mistake becoming a very big one. Here, mileage is king.
Yet even as he kept it tidy, Lawson found himself outgunned by his usual Racing Bulls garage-mate. Arvid Lindblad, the 19‑year‑old Brit, beat him in both sessions – and did it despite sticking his car in the wall in FP2.
Lindblad’s crash brought out the first red flag of the weekend after he lost the rear of his Racing Bull and slammed the barriers. “I’m really sorry, I lost it super early,” came the immediate, chastened radio message. The timesheets, though, softened the blow: P4 in the second session, ahead of George Russell and Verstappen.
The gap between Red Bull and Racing Bulls has been a talking point all season, and Verstappen didn’t duck it. The triple world champion has been vocal about how the 2024 regulations have flattened the feel of the cars and narrowed the spread between the two Red Bull-owned teams.
“No disrespect. And I hope no one picks up on this. But look at Yuki. He jumps in the car. Never driven the car before. Immediately competitive,” he said recently. “Liam jumps from the Racing Bulls to the Red Bull — immediately competitive. It’s because these cars are numb to your driver inputs… The fastest drivers will always come out on top. But it’s really, really limited.”
On Friday, Madrid offered more evidence. Drivers swapped between sister operations and slotted in with minimal adaptation. The stopwatch barely flinched.
Antonelli sets the pace, Madrid shows its teeth
At the sharp end, Kimi Antonelli kept his Monza momentum rolling and set the standard on Formula 1’s return to the Spanish capital after 45 years away.
The 20‑year‑old, fresh from that storming charge from 19th to victory at his home race, topped the second practice session and underlined why he leads the championship by 66 points over Russell with 10 races to go. The Mercedes pair split the honours: Russell fastest in FP1, Antonelli in FP2.
“It is a very cool circuit to drive around,” Antonelli said. “It is a real challenge for us as drivers, with lots of high-speed corners and walls close by. You need to be very precise with your lines and good on the brakes.
“It is very easy to lock up as there are a lot of places where you are braking and turning at the same time. It is a fun challenge and one that I am enjoying. We’ve had a good first day here.”
The Madring is 5.4 kilometres of compromise and risk. Part city streets, part permanent facility, it mixes heavy-braking zones with high-load, long-radius corners that hammer the tyres. Grip surprised many; the walls reminded them not to get carried away.
Several drivers ran wide, a few kissed the barriers, and plenty wrestled with track limits. Overtaking looks scarce. That immediately pushed qualifying to the front of every strategist’s mind.
“Overtaking is likely going to be a real challenge,” Antonelli admitted. “That makes our single-lap work tomorrow morning even more important. We will focus on that overnight, but also looking to ensure we have a good race car for Sunday.”
Behind him in FP2, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were both within a tenth, hinting at a three-way fight at the front. Lindblad’s repaired Racing Bull slotted into fourth, ahead of Russell and Verstappen. Lando Norris, usually a fixture near the top, saw his second session cut short by a gearbox problem on his McLaren.
Tyres on the edge, tempers to follow?
If the layout is unforgiving, the tyres might be brutal.
Russell, never shy about digging into the numbers, painted a stark picture after his Friday running. Teams struggled to coax the rubber into the right operating window, and once there, it didn’t stay happy for long.
“There’s a big question mark over the tyre degradation,” he said. “With the tyre degradation we all had, we think a six-stop race would probably have been the fastest way. I don’t think anybody’s going to do a six-stop race on Sunday and I’m sure tyre deg will be better, but with that big long corner, it really hurts the tyres. That’s going to be a real challenge for everyone.”
If that holds, strategy on Sunday could turn into a juggling act: protect the tyres and risk track position on a circuit where passing is rare, or push and watch the rubber melt away.
The undercard had its own drama. F2 and F3 machinery christened the surface before F1 rolled out, and F2 driver Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak suffered a fiery crash after hitting the barriers and seeing his car catch fire. He climbed out, but the incident underlined how little margin this place offers.
Full house, but slim Spanish hopes
Off track, Madrid has embraced F1’s return. Organisers expect 350,000 spectators across the three days, with tickets sold out and the grandstands already heaving on Friday. The Spanish GP will close out the European leg of the season in front of a full house.
The locals, though, may have to find their excitement away from the podium fight. Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin and Carlos Sainz’s Williams looked blunt all day.
Alonso lost chunks of FP2 to a clutch issue and never threatened the top 10, finishing 15th in the first session and 17th in the second. Sainz hovered in the same anonymous territory: 17th in FP1, 16th in FP2. On current evidence, a home win for either would require chaos up front.
For Lawson, the story is different. No fireworks, no purple sectors, but two solid markers on one of the most demanding new circuits F1 has seen in years. He stayed close enough to Verstappen to keep the conversation going about his long-term future, even as Lindblad’s raw speed kept the pressure on from the other side of the Red Bull family.
Madrid has already claimed its first victims. Qualifying will raise the stakes again. The question now is simple: when the walls close in and the tyres cry enough, who will still look as calm as Lawson did on day one?
