F1 noise in Madrid hits 102.7 dB, nearly double legal limit

102.7 dB average: F1 already exceeds legal noise limit in Madrid

Residents living near Ifema have done what the city council has not: set up a sound level meter. The result, recorded during Formula 3 tests authorised for the homologation of the Madring circuit, shows an average of 102.7 decibels. The legal limit in residential areas of Madrid is 55. Almost double. And the event that the framework announces, the Grand Prix on 11 September, has not even started yet.

The sound level meter against the official narrative

The city council argues that these tests, held between Monday and Tuesday, are "essential" to homologate the circuit. The residents' platform opposing the big event has installed its measuring station in a home near Ifema and the numbers leave no room for nuance: 102.7 average, almost double the legal limit. This is not an abstract problem of decibels: from 80 dB, prolonged exposure can damage hearing health. That a public administration authorises it and sells it as a mere technical procedure is, at the very least, a provocation.

The business of estimulante ilegal (and its mirages)

The municipal defence does not stop at homologation. There is the economic plan: an urban circuit that brings a Grand Prix back to Madrid and projects an image of modernity to the world. Some, from the other trench, respond that residents should rent out their flats for 1,000 euros a day and leave for the weekend. The proposal, a win-win, has a small drawback: not everyone is in the short-term rental business, and noise cannot be rested away with a bank account.

Rear-view mirrors of the motor industry do not help optimism. The precedent of Valencia, whose urban track shone for a few years and is now a memory, fuels the hypothesis that Madring will have a short cycle. It may be that those who buy everything on credit are right and money will make people forget the decibel. But the sound level meter, which knows nothing of political returns, will still be there. And deafness does not understand electoral promises either.