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I had a great time at the race… despite the travel woes getting to/from the circuit but once there it was great.
We were in Grandstand H and we got to see quite a bit of action as the cars are in close formation as they come through the stadium complex. Don’t get seats too low down in the stand or you’ll be behind distracting fencing. We were in row 9 and it was fine.
There is no cover on the grandstands (apart from the main pits stand) so you’ll be in full sun ALL DAY. Very easy to get burnt.
Food was pretty poor but as expected – hot dogs, cold pizza, etc… even Silverstone does a better job these days.
As far as following the race was concerned, I have Vodafone Eurotravelller option on my phone package which costs you £3 for each day you use it and allows you to use your home data package while in Europe. Other phone companies have similar schemes.
I had no problem getting a 3G signal so I was able to follow the whole race using the official F12013 timing app. Also every grandstand faces a large screen showing the broadcast tv picture.
Finally I highly recommend making the time to see the GP2, GP3 and Porsche Supercup races – they are great fun with lots of close action and carnage.
I was rather disappointed by the train – I had read here and on other sites that the train was cheap, frequent and easy – that’s true but Montmelo station is a long walk from the circuit especially if you are at the far end of the circuit like we were.
The train cost €2.20 each way (I think) – on most days it runs every 30 minutes but on Sunday there were more frequent trains – every 10-15 mins. It runs from Barcelona Sants station, stopping at a few other stations in the city before heading for Montmelo.
That’s the good news.
The bad news:
1. Montmelo is a LONG WAY from the circuit. At least 30 mins walk. It took us nearly 60 mins at a brisk pace to get to the further North end of the circuit. Not pleasant if it is hot. There is a shuttle bus but there were big queues.
2. When leaving the circuit on Sunday – every leaves at the same time. We stopped for 45 mins for a drink hoping to let the rush die down before heading for the station. But we were wrong – we got to the station and found a huge crush of people funnelling into the station – we were jammed into a small space inching forward for over an hour before we got onto a train back to Barcelona. And obviously the train was packed with standing room only.
This wasn’t pleasant.3. When you added the time to get to Sants station, the time queueing for a ticket, waiting for a train, the train journey and the walk to our stand – it was over 2.5 hours hotel-to-grandstand. Way too long.
I’m not sure what else to suggest if you’re staying in central Barcelona. I was with 3 other people so on Saturday, having realized how bad the train was likely to be, we flagged down a taxi in Montmelo and took a taxi back to central Barcelona for €70 between the four of us.
Compared with 2.5 hours it took us less than an hour to get back to our hotel on Saturday.
On Sunday morning we decided not to bother with the train and got a taxi directly from our hotel – it was €65 between four of us and took around an hour. The taxi was able to drop us at the circuit gate nearest our grandstand so just another 5 mins into our seats.
We were stuck though wondering how to get back on Sunday. We didn’t think we’d be able to successfully book and meet a taxi (we were probably wrong about that) and the police seemed to have Montmelo locked down so that taxis could not pick up. So we decided to stick with plan A – the train – which turned out to be dreadful.
With hindsight I think we’d have been better to use a bus transfer service, or hire a car and drive to/from the circuit – or make an arrangement with a taxi.
GP2 Race One:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markpanoptica/sets/72157633489313887/GP3 Race One:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markpanoptica/sets/72157633489337769/GP3 Race Two (including last lap carnage):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markpanoptica/sets/72157633505315924/Porsche Supercup:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markpanoptica/sets/72157633489402101/And the main act… the F1 Grand Prix:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markpanoptica/sets/72157633489415775/GP2 close racing and carnage…
F1 first lap through the stadium complex
@chris Also…
“If you have not printed the tickets during the checkout process you can do so at any time by accessing the section Print tickets you’ll find at the bottom of our home page, from which you provide the reference number of the purchase”
So go to the following page and enter your reference number…
http://www.ticketmaster.es/nav/landings/es/mis-entradas/index.htmlThat mock up doesn’t look like what I received. The PDF I received didn’t have QR codes – it had barcodes but it did have 4 pages in the PDF with four separate tickets, one on each page.
The covering email had a customer service link including a page where you can log in to your account and reprint the tickets.
“In case of trouble receiving the PDF file you can access your personal zone and we will send them to you again. For security reasons, we can only send your tickets to the email address you provided when you purchased them.”
My print at home tickets had one page per ticket, and the ticket included the grandstand the block code, row and seat number…. look for “TRIBUNA L”… TRIBUNA is spanish for grandstand
Why is everyone not pointing out the obvious… ?
The lights are only a repeat of the flags displayed… so if there is a green light (which EVERYONE agrees there was) then there must have been a green flag at a marshal post somewhere BEFORE the light..
You cannot have a green light without a green flag at a marshall point BEFORE it.
So where was it ? That’s the key question… where was the overtake in relation to THE MARSHALL’S GREEN FLAG (not the green light which is simply a repeater mechanism)…
Booked up for 2013…. :)
There are 4 in our group, myself, my two brothers and one of their wives (the other wives preferred to go to the beach)…
We’ve booked tickets for Grandstand H with a view of the ’stadium’ section and directly opposite the chicane just before the final corner onto the pit straight and the pit entry. We got our tickets from http://www.circuitcat.com/en/ booking was very easy and the tickets are ”PRINT AT HOME” so no issues with collections.
If you’re wanting to go I suggest getting on with it. We found that the best flights from Heathrow were nearly full. We are making a holiday of it so we booked a central Barcelona hotel and will be staying a week. We found that many of the good cost effective hotels were booked so you’ll either be going down market or paying high prices or staying a long way away.
We’ve all been to Barcelona before but its a great place so there will be 3 couples going and over the week we’ll have fun at the GP and everyone will have something to enjoy :) :)
We’re also looking at L for 2013 and looking at H as well.. .bit concerned that L might be a bit isolated and not have many facilities nearby… tricky to get to too
True @Mnmracer which is why I don’t think VET will get to the top of that record table.
If he wants to be top of the record tables then its really poles he needs to focus on :)
Schumacher reached his records in an era where competition was much less – fewer really great drivers – and he had a long career which included an abnormally good run of years in a dominant car.
I just don’t think F1 is like that now, F1 is in a highly competitive and closely fought era and that seems likely to continue over the next decade.
So projecting ahead I don’t see VET having the hit rate over the next ten years that Schumacher had over his dominant period. And I don’t see VET’s track record showing that he has the hit rate to get to the top of these record tables.
My assumption is that VET will have 10 years career to go, that period will be closely fought, that he’ll be in a dominant car for only 5 out of those 10 years (history shows that’s a not unreasonable assumption), that his competitors will continue to fight with him as they are right now.
SO what does that do for the record tables…
Race wins: I’m assuming he’ll have 6 wins in each of the 5 dominant years – that would take him to 56 wins, taking him to 2nd place just ahead of Prost and a long way behind Schumacher. To catch MSC he’d have to have 4-5 years like 2011 rather than the win rate he’s had in 2010 or 2012. I just don’t see him having 4-5 years like 2011 over the next decade.
Podiums: Lets say he gets 10 podiums a year for the 5 dominant years and 3 a year for the others… that would give him 110 podiums which would put him 2nd. However that isn’t the whole picture because ALO and RAI are way ahead of him in the record table at the moment and if they continue to get podiums then they will be well ahead of 110 podiums by the end of their careers. So my prediction in 10 years time would be MSC top, following by ALO, then RAI, and then VET 4th.
Fastest Laps: VET’s hit rate on fastest laps just isn’t good enough for him to get up to the top of the table. MSC is top and achieved 25%, Prost 20%, RAI 21%… VET has achieved 14% in his dominant 4 years. This era is just too competitive for him to get a high hit rate. If he can only achieve 14% in these years then he is unlikely to average that over the whole of the next 10 years. So lets say he does almost as well – say 12%. 200 races (20 races per year for 10 years) @ 12% = 24 fastest laps giving him 38 career fastest laps, getting him 3rd in the table behind MSC and PRO, and only just ahead of RAI who is quite capable of adding to his total of 37. So my forecast is that VET might be 4th, just behind RAI and PRO but a long way behind MSC.
Poles: This is the one that he is well on track for. He has 35 from 99 starts, a hit rate of about a third. If he achieved the same in the 5 dominant years that I’m predicting then that would give him about another 30-35 poles taking him above MSC’s 68 poles. If you want to cheer VET to the top of the all-time record tables then Poles is the one to focus on. He’s already third in the table and has Senna and MSC in his sights… and he has Senna’s uncanny knack of being able to pull out the one single quickest lap from out of the hat that’s needed to get pole.
All it needs is for Vettel to have a DNF and Alonso would take the advantage…. if Vettel finishes on the podium in the remaining races then he’ll probably have it sewn up.
