When Formula 1 raced in Madrid

Jarama was built in the mid-1960s at the initiative of the Real Automóvil Club de España, and became the country’s first modern permanent racing circuit. Until then Spanish races were run on closed public roads, like Montjuïc in Barcelona: fast, spectacular, and without any of the protection taken for granted today.

The layout was drawn by the Dutchman John Hugenholtz — the same name behind Zandvoort and Suzuka. That places Jarama in better company than its size suggests: 3.404 kilometres, narrow and undulating, where overtaking was hard and a driver’s work showed.

It opened on 1 July 1967. A year later it hosted its first championship Spanish Grand Prix.

The most retold season in Formula 1 history — Hunt against Lauda — came through Madrid, and left one of its strangest episodes here. On 2 May 1976 James Hunt crossed the line first, and shortly afterwards the win was taken off him: his McLaren was 1.5 centimetres wider than a width regulation that had come into force the day before.

McLaren appealed. In July the tribunal found in its favour, judged the difference minimal and returned the nine points. In a championship Hunt went on to win by one, that appeal decided the title.

And the runner-up that day was Niki Lauda, racing with broken ribs from a tractor accident, who beat Hunt off the line and led the first third of the race. Three months later came the Nürburgring.

The race the circuit itself calls the most glorious in its history was also its last. Gilles Villeneuve had a Ferrari 126CK with more engine than it knew what to do with and little else, on a track where overtaking was near impossible. He got to the front and stayed there.

He ran the final twenty laps on ruined tyres with Jacques Laffite on his wing. Three more cars were queued behind Laffite. The five crossed the line covered by 1.24 seconds: Laffite at 0.22, John Watson at 0.58, Carlos Reutemann at 1.01 and Elio de Angelis at 1.24. It is the second-closest finish in Formula 1 history.

It was Villeneuve’s last Formula 1 win. He died the following year in a crash at Zolder.

There was no single reason. Jarama was short, narrow and hard to extend, and 1980s Formula 1 was beginning to demand facilities that did not fit there. On top of that came the instability of the era — the open war between FISA and FOCA, which is precisely what cost the 1980 race its championship status.

The 1982 Spanish Grand Prix was cancelled, and when the championship returned to Spain in 1986 it went to Jerez. Madrid would wait forty-five years to get Formula 1 back, and by then it would not be at Jarama.

The 2026 circuit has nothing in common with the old one. Jarama sits in San Sebastián de los Reyes, out of town; the MADRING has been laid out inside the IFEMA grounds, in the city, partly along roads of the exhibition complex itself. One measured 3.4 kilometres; the other is over five.

What does repeat is the slot in the calendar: the Spanish Grand Prix is once again run in Madrid, as it was between 1976 and 1981.