Spanish GP – The vice-president of the Spanish Federation warns of the haste of Madrid politicians

Work on the future 2026 Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid has not started before the first dissonant voices are already being heard on the other side of the Pyrenees. Questioned by the Spanish media SoyMotor.com, the vice-president of the Real Federación Española de Automovilismo (RFEDA, the equivalent of the FFSA in Spain) expressed some reservations about the safety of the Madrid circuit.

The first part, according to him, concerns the presence of a tunnel allowing passage from the Recinto Ferial industrial zone to the faster Valdebebas zone, in the first sector.

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“About this first tunnel, what concerns me the most is that it is quite long and you get there at full speed. I think we should try to reduce the entry speed as much as possible so that the drivers don't go all the way into it. I feel like that's not the case and honestly, it worries me. »

Furthermore, Joaquin Verdegay is campaigning for optimal preparation ahead of the event, in particular by organizing a preparatory race (test event) a few months before the fateful date. “When we organized a Grand Prix in Valencia, six months before doing a race, and at least three months before, we knew we had to do a test race. There Formula 1 is sufficiently dangerous and important to not take as many risks as in Las Vegas, where a manhole destroyed the car of Carlos Sainz“said Joaquin Verdegay.

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“We also cannot allow incompetence on the part of the commissioners who, as in Japan, had driven a service truck under the rain, he slips in reference to Jules Bianchi's accident in October 2014. It's our responsibility to prevent this from happening and to do that we like to experiment. In Valencia we did it and found that the asphalt was torn off at the entrance to the bridge. We then took the necessary measures to ensure that this did not happen in Formula 1.

Because it is the blindness of politicians that Joaquin Verdegay points out. Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, mayor of Madrid and Angel Asensio, president of the Madrid Chamber of Commerce, are in fact important actors in this project. “I think it is extremely dangerous to go straight to Formula 1, especially when the political figures in Madrid have said they want the GP to last ten years and the Spanish GP in Madrid to be the best in the world.” If we want it to be the best in the world, I would therefore ask that, six months in advance, we can organize a weekend of races, with single-seaters, GTs, all kinds of cars, because the first One thing we need to be sure of is that everything can work. »