Ferrari release full onboard lap video of F1's newest track and it looks tricky

Well, La Monumental looks like everything it was cracked up to be as the countdown to the first Spanish Grand Prix at the new Madring circuit reaches a final crescendo.

For the first time ahead of its debut in two months time, there's official video of an F1 car taking on Spain's Madring circuit, including its half-kilometre, heavily-banked Turn 12.

Ferrari were in Madrid for a filming day earlier this month, running their allotted 200km and getting some great footage in the process – which they've now cut up to give a first real taste of what the track is like to drive. And it's...hard to tell, for reasons we'll get into, but it looks like a reasonably testing circuit.

(We say a first 'real' taste because no, F1 26 doesn't actually count, same as when NASCAR's Coronado circuit was 'first driven' on iRacing this year).

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Thoughts on the first F1 video from the Madring

It's tough to get a real sense of the flow of the track from the video though, thanks almost entirely to the edit cutting to a different camera view every few seconds. We're sure that a close-up of the side of your driver's helmet from the side is very nice b-roll footage to have, but come on! We want to see the track!

The one lap of footage was cut together from clips of both Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton driving the brand new circuit, which will open for Spanish Grand Prix FP1 on September 11th.

While the footage doesn't give the best idea of how a full-speed racing lap will look, we do have a couple of quick thoughts.

First, La Monumental – the corner looks fantastic (even if a slightly wider track at that point might promote more absolutely thrilling overtaking), and an F1 car taking on banking that steep with the throttle open looks and sounds great. The banking hits 13.5 degrees at its steepest, which beats out a number of oval tracks used for NASCAR and IndyCar, including Indianapolis Motor Speedway (of 2000s US Grand Prix fame), Gateway, and Phoenix.

Well done, it rules, that will look spectacular on race day.

Second, isn't it weird to see an F1 circuit without any sponsors around it and with plain concrete barriers? It looks like we're seeing some sort of strange phantom testing track that we were never meant to be aware of – like we've phased through a wall into a video game and found a half-built test level the developers never removed from the code. It's uncanny.

Still, it's an F1 track, so it'll be plastered floor to ceiling with ads soon enough!

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