Written by I have written many times about my love of racing. This summer I had the incredible opportunity to attend an F1 race with my dad. We chose to attend the Belgian Grand Prix, held at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, one of the most legendary circuits in the world.
Day 1:
Day one was Friday 26 July, also known as practice day. We had rented a car in Liege where we were staying, and had paid for parking at the circuit. We drove the 1:30 to the circuit entrance where we were lead to the yellow parking area. What we didn’t know at this point was that the yellow parking area was a collection of different parking lots and not just one designated area. We were led to lot P15 which is some Belgian guy’s field. We walked from the parking lot to the circuit entrance which was about 2 miles from where we parked, and all downhill. We find the correct entrance for our tickets. We then walk to our seats which were in the covered gold 3 grandstand at the top of the hill. This grandstand offers a view of the infamous eau rouge, raidillon corner section which includes an elevation change of 40 meters and average grade of 18%. This is another case of photography and tv cameras just not doing the actual corner justice in just how impressive these corners are in real life. We arrive just before the start of Free Practice 1 for the f1, which is also just around lunch time. This friday was the day after we arrived, and as will be described in a future blog, me and my dad hadn’t eaten any real meals in the previous 24 hours, so we were very hungry. My dad waited in line at a frijt stand. (frijt is dutch for fries) I go and get us coins which you use to pay for everything at the circuit. We get two frijt bowls which are fries with ketchup on top, at least that’s what we got on our frijt. We later got a pizza which cost a very steep 20 euros, which was our actual lunch for the day. On this day was also fp2 for f1 as well as qualifying for f3 and f2. It is truly incredible just how fast these cars are in real life. The area of the circuit we were sitting in, the cars reach over 200 mph at, and that is special to see. After fp2 we decided that we were very tired and that it would take a long time to get out of the venue if we waited for the porsche cup session, which was unfortunate, but we decided that it was necessary. We walked the 2.5 miles from our seats to the car, where we then waited for around 1 hour before finally being able to leave. We then drove back to liege where we got food and went back to our airbnb.
Day 2:
As you can probably imagine, we were still feeling the jet lag at this point, so I inadvertenly ended up sleeping in until about 8. We then drove to the circuit and parked. This time we were directed to lot p84 which was some belgian guy’s backyard. We will come back to this later. We then walked the 2.5 miles to our seats, and arrived just in time fp3. (We wanted to get there earlier, but we weren’t able to make it in time) This day was a lot different from the previous day, as in it was going to rain this day. It started raining just before the f1 cars went out, so they drove on wet weather tires. (The british write it as tyres, but they are wrong, and I refuse to write it this way) Around 30 minutes into the session, drive Lance Stroll crashed his Aston Martin at our corner. This was due to the extremely wet weather, and a general skill issue. After this accident, a red flag was thrown by the race director and would stay in effect until about 2 minutes remained in the 1 hour session. For the next couple hours it continued to rain a lot, leading to the delay of the f2 sprint race, and eventual cancellation. The f1 qualifying session then happened with Max Verstappen fastest, and Charles Leclerc second fastest. This was also a wet session, but just not as wet as it was earlier in the day. We then left, and walked to our car. Except we didn’t. We ended up walking straight passed where we parked our car, and walked an extra 1/2 mile. The reason we missed where we had parked our car. They had hidden the sign displaying the parking lot behind a couple of bushes. During our walk back to the car we had also walked through some field which was very muddy, so our shoes were quite muddy. It took us only about 15 minutes to get out, and we got some food, and went back to the airbnb.
Day 3:
On race day we woke up at 6 for an early drive to the track. We got to the track and parked in almost the same place as we did on day 1, a field in Francorchamps, Belgium. We then walked the 2.5 miles to our seats where we watched the f3 and f2 feature races, which were absolute carnage, with the f3 race running most of the 15 laps under safety car. The porsche cup race then went ahead, which was also carnage, but way more fun to watch than f2 or f3. From this point there was 2:30 before race time, so we walked around to get some food and look for some team merch. We didn’t find any team merch that we wanted, and eventually returned to our seats. About 30 minutes before the race the opening ceremony happened which was interesting, which also ended with the belgian national anthem. The race started with Leclerc on pole, and it was very interesting. Eventually the race would end with George Russell crossing the line in first with Lewis Hamilton 2nd, sealing a mercedes 1-2 finish. After this the track invasion begun. We participated in the track invasion and walked on circuit towards the podium celebration. We knew we weren’t going to make it to the podium celebration but it was really cool to see the circuit from the track. We then walked to our car where, once again, we waited. This time we waited for two hours, before moving. My dad went to the bathroom at some point where some german guys told him that last year, they had waited until 1am before being able to leave. We got lucky, and only waited for 2 hours. We then drove back to the airbnb and went to sleep for the night.
Overall this was an absolutely incredible experience, that I would love to do again, even if I say some negative things about the experience that really stick out.
