The first Spanish Grand Prix hosted at the new Madring circuit welcomed a record 352,618 attendees across the race weekend.
This beats the previous record of 300,286 attendees at last year’s event, which was held at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. The Catalan track exceeded that figure again this year with an attendance of 301,273 people under its new moniker of the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.
Attendance at the Madring grew as the weekend progressed, from 87,890 attendees on Friday to 122,039 on Saturday and 128,183 for the race on Sunday. The weekend also saw high footfall in the VIP areas, including 38,879 guests in the hospitality areas and around 15,000 people in the Paddock Club.
On broadcast, the race attracted 1.55 million FTA viewers in Spain, achieving a 16.9 per cent share, which made it the most-watched non-news content across all channels.
Mediaset also broadcasts the Spanish Grand Prix as part of a sublicensing agreement with DAZN, which recently extended its Formula One media rights deal in Spain until 2030.
The inaugural event also relied heavily on the local public transport infrastructure, which is not very common for the typically isolated circuits that Formula One has historically held races at. Metro de Madrid carried around 168,000 people to the circuit across the weekend, while Cercanías added a further 107,000 journeys via the C-1 Line and Valdebebas station.
Despite the positive numbers, the circuit proved to be far from a roaring success among drivers and fans, including reigning world champion Lando Norris.
“I don’t know how someone looks at the design and goes ‘mint’,” he said during a post-race interview.
Organisers of the race have since confirmed that changes will be made for future editions of the event, while it should be noted that this was a more seamless debut – at least from an operational standpoint – than previous entries to the schedule like Las Vegas and Miami.
This was assisted by the existing infrastructure at the Ifema exhibition centre, which is used to hosting events at scale and sits in close proximity to Madrid’s international airport.
Don’t miss the latest news and insights from across the business world of motorsport. Subscribe to the BlackBook Motorsport Weekly newsletter here.