Fire on Debut: F2’s First Madring Practice Stopped by Inthraphuvasak Scare

Thirty minutes of stopped session, a car engulfed in flames, and another crash on top of it to close out the hour. Formula 2 had an eventful debut at the Madring, Madrid’s new circuit, with Nikola Tsolov taking the fastest time in a practice that ended up feeling more like a test of nerves than a simple setup run.

One Single Shot to Learn a Brand-New Circuit

Unlike most other weekends, there’s no room for error here: Formula 2 only had 45 minutes of free practice before this afternoon’s qualifying decides both the pole sitter and the grid for Saturday’s sprint race. That, on a circuit absolutely nobody had raced on before, beyond some simulator data and whatever the F1 and F3 teams that already tested here could share, made this session a far tougher exam than usual.

The Madring, running nearly five kilometres and combining street and permanent sections, already has a signature postcard moment for the weekend: Turn 12, nicknamed “La Monumental,” a banked corner reaching up to 13.5 degrees, the steepest on the entire calendar, which seems to stretch on forever before the track rises and pushes drivers into a tricky downhill braking zone heading into Turn 13. Several drivers have already compared it to sections of Budapest and Jeddah.

The Big Scare: Fire on Track

The session was a little past its halfway point when the moment that defined this practice arrived: a heavy crash for Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak that ended with his car on fire. Race control had no choice but to stop the session completely, and the delay stretched to nearly half an hour while marshals put out the fire and cleared the car from the track. For a driver who’d already been near the bottom of the timesheet in several sessions this season, the incident added another tough weekend to the pile, though thankfully nobody was hurt.

Once running finally resumed, the lost time forced everyone to rush through the remaining minutes to gather as much reference data as possible before qualifying.

Tsolov Sets the Pace, But the Session Wasn’t Done Yet

Amid that scramble to bank laps, championship leader Nikola Tsolov set the fastest time of the afternoon with a 1:47.059, beating Nico Varrone by 0.110 and Rafael Villagomez by 0.137 to round out the practice podium. Colton Herta slotted into fourth, four tenths off the pace.

But the drama of this FP wasn’t over yet. Close to the end, Laurens van Hoepen had another crash, considerably less dramatic than Inthraphuvasak’s, but enough to effectively close out a session that had already taken a beating. Between the fire-induced red flag and this second incident, Formula 2 ended up with considerably less useful track time than it would have liked to get to grips with a completely new layout.

What’s at Stake This Afternoon

The championship context adds extra weight to all of this. Tsolov arrives in Madrid as the leader with 177 points, but Rafael Câmara has been closing the gap after taking pole at Monza and putting together a strong weekend there, the difference between the two now sits at just 11 points. Gabriele Mini, third in the standings on 147, still has the mathematical room to get back into the fight if he can turn around the slump he’s been going through in recent rounds.

With just one free practice session and this much uncertainty over the real grip levels on track, this afternoon’s qualifying looks set to be a decisive factor, Tsolov himself had already flagged this before the weekend, comparing how much a strong lap matters here to what qualifying well means at Monaco. Starting up front on a circuit this tight, with so little margin for error, could end up mattering more here than on any other weekend of the calendar.

Is this first step enough for Tsolov to lock down his championship cushion, or is Câmara coming in hot to flip the script in this afternoon’s qualifying? Tell us your prediction in the comments before F2’s first-ever Madring pole gets decided.

RESULTS — F2 FREE PRACTICE, 2026 SPANISH GRAND PRIX (MADRING)

Sources: Motorsport.com, Pit Debrief, Motorsport Week, FIA Formula 2, Formula Live Pulse