Formula 1 drivers are bracing to drive the “scary” and “crazy” Madring circuit for the first time on Friday, with expectations that it will be the “most complicated” track of the year.

All F1 drivers have completed many laps in the virtual world to prepare for the first brand-new track in three years, but Thursday gave them their up-close look at how the circuit has come together in the real-world.

Here’s what the drivers are expecting, from the toughest corners to whether there was a missed opportunity to improve overtaking.

A ‘scary’ track

A two-day Formula 3 test at the circuit produced 19 red flags two weeks ago, raising expectations of a frenetic weekend, with Williams boss James Vowles calling it “a track that kills cars”.

“When I heard about the 20 [19] red flags in F3, I was a bit surprised. And then after I drove on the sim, I was surprised there was only 20 [19] red flags,” quipped Mercedes driver George Russell.

“It’s a crazy circuit. I would put it, arguably, as the most risky circuit of the whole calendar.”

The circuit is littered with tricky corners, blind exits and close walls that leave very little room for error. “Mentally exhausting” is how Gabriel Bortoleto described a lap of the Madring.

Fresh from walking the track, Alex Albon said there’s “a lot of walls, a lot of high-speed corners, a lot of blind corners gives me vibes of Macau, but more for an F1 track.”

“A little bit concerning the blind spots in some of the corners, like if there is a car that’s stopped on the other side of the corner, I hope they’re just quick on the VSCs [virtual safety cars] and the red flags,” he added.

“Inevitably, there are going to be a few crashes this weekend.”

Pierre Gasly echoed that, saying, “I’ll put my money on the red flag, that’s for sure”, and he expects quite a “disrupted weekend” with accidents.

Albon said he is “quite concerned” about where cars will get out of the way in qualifying at the banked La Monumental corner, given the line you take through there and the blind exit.

“I don’t think there’s a correct place you can position the car,” Albon said of La Monumental. “If you put the car up top, actually I think the line is kind of drift up to the middle of the track and then you come back again.

“So, you’re not in a perfect place. It reminds me a little bit of, do you remember Fernando and Esteban in Brazil at Turn 3, where they had that crash [in sprint qualifying in 2023]?

“You can get dirty air and the dirty air can create the knock-on effect.”

After his simulator running, Cadillac driver Sergio Perez says it’s “a proper track. It’s a bit scary. It reminds me a bit of Jeddah”. Team-mate Valtteri Bottas described it as a mix between Jeddah and Baku, while others have compared it to Monaco.

Haas driver Esteban Ocon called it a “crazy circuit” with so much risk versus reward trade-offs to make, while championship leader Kimi Antonelli says it’s the “most complicated” track of the year for both drivers and engineers.

“Driving-wise, you’ve got all kinds of corners. You’ve got chicanes, fast corners, banked, medium-speed, also braking – you’ve got a lot of straight-line braking, but [also] a lot of braking where you’re actually still turning,” Antonelli said.

“Turn 17 is a corner where, when you hit the brake, you’re still turning, and then you straighten the car. So it’s a very tricky track, very challenging, but very exciting at the same time with zero margin of mistake.

“It’s also complicated on the engineering side because finding a set-up that is a good compromise for the whole lap is not going to be easy.

“You can find a set-up that helps you in the chicanes, when you need to cut kerbs, or a set-up that helps you in the fast corners, but to find a set-up that is good over kerbs, good on changing direction, good on fast corners, is going to be difficult.”

Limited overtaking

There are expectations for a knife-edge qualifying on Saturday, but drivers have expressed fresh concerns about the quality of racing on Sunday.

“Overtaking will be hard. It’s going to be, in my mind, closer to Singapore,” was Perez’s view.

Gasly sees it as an opportunity, though. He’s relishing exploring the overtaking opportunities, as drivers will have to “improvise and be creative on race day and see what’s possible.

“We’ll be the creators of these first moves”.

There had been hopes that drivers taking different lines into the La Monumental corner would create an overtaking opportunity, but Albon isn’t so sure.

“I worry about the marbles in the race. So on top of trying to find clean air and trying to go up high on the banking, you’ll have marbles to contend with as well later into the race, so you’ve got to be careful with that,” Albon said.

“I personally don’t think you can do that many lines. The track’s quite narrow and it’s different when you have clean air and there’s space, whereas if you have a little snap you’re into the wall immediately.

“Drivers aren’t as willing to stick it up to the top of the banking and take the risk of running a high line. I hope I’m proved wrong, but I think that part of the track is not going to offer that much overtaking.”

A missed opportunity?

Haas driver Ollie Bearman feels like an opportunity was missed with the layout of the Madring.

“It’s a shame in a way because I think the layout is OK, but there are some features of the circuit which naturally deter overtaking,” Bearman said.

“One of them is the braking for Turn 5, which is curved – and that’s the real overtaking opportunity. That kind of curved braking takes away any possibility of different lines and sending one up the inside.

“So that’s a shame and maybe a bit of an oversight, but it means that we’re going to be fully focused on qualifying.”

The Turn 5/6 chicane, the site of many accidents in the F3 test, is preceded by two flat-out kinks, which also feature one of only two straight mode zones on the circuit.

So into that chicane, along with the first chicane, is the most logical overtaking opportunity.

But, as Bearman says, the entry to the chicane is curved and tight, so the overtakes will really have to be completed before the braking zone.

Albon shares his frustration, believing any overtakes on Sunday will be decided by energy management differences rather than braking differences.

“I wish they did something a bit different with the braking zones and not having them too much angled,” Albon said.

“You’ve got a lot of combined corners which, just thinking of overtaking on Sunday, it feels like it’s quite easy to defend. You just put the car in the middle of the track and you’re not going to get a car that’s going to go past you.

“That just means that it will be more of a deployment overtake than a braking overtake.”

Expect the track to ramp up

Gasly expects a Monaco-style ramping up of the track conditions and driver confidence, meaning laptimes will drop significantly as the sessions go by.

“In the simulator, if you touch a wall, brush a wall, you press escape and restart. Here the approach is going to be slightly different,” Gasly said.

“That’s what I like, when you’re going to be very humble to the track. It’s going to be one of these tracks where the build-up to it will be very important, similar to Monaco.

“I think it’s exciting. It’s going to be a first for everybody.”

The track ramping up and drivers getting more confidence as the weekend progresses has a big impact on how teams manage their energy deployment through the lap. Every team will have run simulations pre-weekend that won’t necessarily correlate with the first laps in FP1.

Honda’s chief engineer Shintaro Orihara said: “We have done some simulation sessions before coming here. That gives us some ideas.

“But laptime improvement will be significant for everyone come qualifying. So we shouldn’t panic in FP1, even if we see a big difference from the simulation session.

“One important point is to adjust energy management step by step, looking at the laptime. Quali will be a big step from FP3.

“So we should predict the driver and throttle application based on what we have observed from FP1 to FP3, to prepare data for qualy. I think these are quite challenging topics.”

It will also depend on the car you have.

“There’s a lot of corners on this track that will be between 90% and 100% throttle. I think the top teams will be flat out; for the midfield teams and the backfield teams, a bigger lift, which has a big effect on deployment,” Albon explained.

“Without going too technical, if you can do a corner flat or not massively changes the way the deployment works.

“You don’t want to go in qualifying and suddenly all these corners start to become flat and your deployment starts to move around a lot.”