Formula E might have stumbled upon a new model for its race events after achieving a multi-faceted success with its first Madrid E-Prix at the Jarama circuit.

There was some irony that Formula E, once awash with city centre street track USP, was racing at a long forgotten grand prix track, while in four months' time, Formula 1 will be downtown at the currently in-build MadRing street/exhibition centre circuit.

But times are changing. Formula E's dalliances with New York, Paris, Rome and Hong Kong are over for now. More financially frugal solutions have been required and found - some good, some not so.

Jarama could have become a Misano 2024-style disappointment, when a poorly attended pack-racing madhouse played out at the MotoGP venue and was received with little relish by the teams and the fans.

But there was none of that last week at Jarama, where a genuinely big event gave the place - generously dressed by the branding and marketing teams - a warmth and glow that belied the unseasonably cool Spanish spring.

"OK, it was not a glorious day of sunshine in Madrid, but it was rammed here and the King of Spain, former Prime Ministers, Presidents, massive CEOs, celebrities just brought a real energy to the place yesterday," Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds told The Race, ironically amid warm sunshine in the paddock a day after the race.

"These 20,000-30,000 footprints feel like a really good fit now for us. I could see how proud the circuit owners were yesterday walking around, and all of a sudden it felt like there was life breathed into this circuit in a way they probably hadn't seen for a while." 

Dodds is right. Jarama has seen much better days in the 1970s and 80s with F1 and sportscar races, but now its only FIA race is the European Truck Racing Championship every October. That is a well-attended event (with chainsaw-wielding truck ultras - no, really!), but it's not a big international event like Formula E.

The event brought a feel-good factor that many assumed would also have been at the inaugural Miami E-Prix at the Hard Rock stadium track two months ago. But that event really failed to deliver in terms of actual buzz and atmosphere.

This was largely blamed on the inclement weather, but in reality, the promotion and noise appeared much more subdued than at the Madrid E-Prix last weekend. A Citroen demonstration in the city a week before, a civic reception and public presentation of drivers, Real Madrid footballers and all-round racing heroes such as Carlos Sainz, Juan Pablo Montoya and Rubens Barrichello brought the big event to life.

There was also something of a febrile paddock to savour too, largely thanks to The Race's unmasking of the drivers' letter to the FIA president a few days before. If ever a location warranted political theatre, then the venue for one of F1's biggest existential crises, via the FISA/FOCA war in 1980, proper drama at Jarama felt weirdly quite apt 45 years on.

Formula E Operations rightly gave themselves a pat on the back for the first Jarama race. The feeling from the teams and manufacturers, several of whom activated very powerfully at the track and in the wider area, was that this was a real event that could be really built up in years to come.

The Race discovered that a Gen4 test was run at Jarama in May 2025, with the development car believed to have run on the track without the temporary chicane. It reached 322km/h (200mph) before the braking area at Turn 1. That sounds like an even more thrilling prospect for a summer 2027 Jarama Formula E race, though, given what was witnessed last Saturday, even more excitement won't be easy to achieve. 

A lot to admire then at the first Madrid E-Prix, but there were also areas that needed addressing too. 

The pit garages and outer paddock are ageing and clearly need some investment soon. Making it a bit shinier will be expected by the manufacturers next season, and according to Dodds, that's being discussed.

"In terms of some of the infrastructure, it has come up in our FETAMA [teams' group] meetings actually, which if this is going to be a long-term home, then what's possible?" said Dodds.

"I thought the circuit owners did a brilliant job yesterday, but I suspect [track owner] RACE won't want to literally tear up all the garages and rebuild them at a huge expense but there's things that can be done to probably make them configure slightly better for us."

So, could Formula E have found a new model of event to go with the overt street pop-up circuit, the hybrid city centre/exhibition venue (Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, London), the stadium model (Miami, Seoul) and the permanent circuit (Shanghai, Portland)?

Could Imola, Zandvoort, Brands Hatch and Laguna Seca follow the Jarama method now and become dressed-up racers' tracks that make the public be wowed by absurd acceleration performance and F2 pace level racing in Gen4?

"Having more of a fixed circuit festival feeling on circuits that are amazing racetracks but with facilities that might not fit 150,000 people a day turning up for a Formula 1 race or be complicated to deliver there, could be very interesting," said Dodds. 

"Don't read too much into this, but you take Zandvoort, and they have to split the paddock in two and it's tight on the footprint, but it's a great circuit. I think this weekend has given us a really interesting view of what's possible. 

"The other thing that's helpful about here of course is you are 25 minutes from the city centre so you can attract this huge crowd. I guess in the same way that Brands Hatch is half an hour from London and Zandvoort is 20 minutes by train from Amsterdam and being urban and close to the big cities really helps us." 

Formula E is presently forming its 2026-27 calendar. It will definitely include Jarama and it might have Zandvoort, Imola and Brands Hatch on it too. Whatever it collates for the new schedule, it and calendars further down the line can look to the first Madrid E-Prix as a kind of litmus test to evidence that it's not necessarily about the absolute location but more about the spectacle of the circuit challenge, the close proximity to a large city and fundamentally how the event is promoted and sold.

Formula E has plenty to sell at present: the last mega-close season of Gen3, the imminent arrival of Gen4, a new brand in Opel, its pioneering technical story of taming complex cars, control systems/software relevant to the auto industry and of course, the fact that F1 has struggled to grasp some of the intricacies of EV tech.

If it can do that at packed out venues, no matter how old they may be, that can showcase faster and faster cars so viscerally, then maybe the old tropes and stereotypes of electric motorsport being a bit anaemic and timorous can once and for all be shut down.

The first ever Madrid E-Prix becoming a four-way scrap to the death was a great start for that plan to be actioned ever further.