Lando Norris secured pole position for the Spanish Grand Prix at the new Madring circuit, delivering a 1:31.824 lap time. The McLaren driver edged out championship leader Kimi Antonelli by a margin of 0.011 seconds in the final moments of the qualifying session. This marks Norris’s third pole position of the current 2026 Formula 1 season.
The Madring, officially known as Circuito de Madring, is a hybrid track spanning 5.414 kilometres with 22 corners, located around the IFEMA Exhibition Centre in Madrid. This circuit is hosting the Spanish Grand Prix for the first time this year, a tenure set to continue until 2035.
Norris’s decisive lap was described by him as one of the best of his career, despite a minor error in the final corner. McLaren team principal Andrea Stella later estimated this mistake cost approximately 0.3 seconds.
Antonelli, driving for Mercedes, qualified second with a time of 1:31.835. He currently leads the 2026 Drivers’ Championship by 66 points over teammate George Russell, with Lewis Hamilton 76 points further back in third.
Max Verstappen of Red Bull secured third place on the grid, recording a 1:31.964. Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton will start fourth, having posted a 1:32.013.
Hamilton’s qualifying performance followed an incident in Free Practice 3 where he crashed at the final corner and reportedly ignored team instructions to stop his damaged car. He later cited an unexpected increase in understeer on his final Q3 lap as a factor preventing further improvement.
Charles Leclerc, Hamilton’s Ferrari teammate, qualified fifth with a 1:32.019, just 0.006 seconds behind. George Russell placed sixth for Mercedes, clocking a 1:32.149.
Oscar Piastri, Norris’s McLaren teammate, qualified seventh, 0.470 seconds adrift of pole position. Piastri described his second Q3 attempt as ‘pretty shocking’.
The top ten was completed by Liam Lawson in eighth for Red Bull, Franco Colapinto in ninth for Alpine, and Arvid Lindblad in tenth for Racing Bulls.
The Madring circuit features a notable 550-meter-long, 24-degree banked Turn 12, named ‘La Monumental’, designed to offer multiple racing lines. The circuit’s challenging nature, combining public roads and purpose-built sections, has been compared to Monaco in terms of the importance of grid position due to limited overtaking opportunities.
Andrea Stella noted that McLaren had focused on improving the MCL40’s low-speed performance throughout the weekend. He also acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding race strategy for Sunday due to high tyre graining observed and a lack of high-fuel running.
Local Spanish drivers Carlos Sainz, driving for Williams, and Fernando Alonso, representing Aston Martin, were both eliminated during the Q1 session.
‘I’m a little bit surprised to be here now but my god it was probably one of the best laps I’ve done ever in my career,’ Norris stated after the session. ‘One of those laps where everything just came together.’
