Drive to Survive (in 100º Heat): A Day Trip for the Barcelona Grand Prix

I am an impulsive person. I also have a tiny bit of a shopping problem. These problems are especially exacerbated when I am stressed. I have also gotten into Formula 1, after like many American fans, I was shown an ad for the newest season of Drive to Survive while browsing on Netflix, and promptly binged all four seasons within five days. I think it’s because a lot of content on streaming series these days feels rather low-quality, and despite its issues around manufacturing drama, it is a fairly well done series overall.

Anyways, that’s how, at five am on the Monday after staying up almost all night for the second night in a row, I impulsive checked one more time to see if there were tickets available for the Barcelona Grand Prix. I had convinced my parents that we just had to go to Europe, just conveniently around the time of the Barcelona and Monaco Grand Prix, in the hopes of getting to attend my first ever F1 race. Unfortunately it turns out that F1 is a rather popular sport, and thus by the time I executed my brilliant plan, pretty much all tickets were sold out. Also, my parents did not want to go to Barcelona or Monaco so their daughter wanted to watch cars drive really fast for two hours. But that morning, relatively reasonably priced tickets for the Barcelona race were magically available on the official website. So, I bought them.

That brings me to Sunday, May 22. While I was not able to convince my parents for us to have a longer stay in Barcelona so I could make full use of my three day ticket (which also included a free pit walk on Thursday), I did make a day trip for the race day itself. So that Sunday, I set an alarm for 5:15 am, and walked to the bus station in San Sebastián, where we were staying, to take a bus to Bilbao, the nearest major airport.

this is unrelated, but look how clear and calm the water is at 5:45 am. Crazy!

It was a pleasant (and surprisingly packed) bus ride, although I was much too excited to really sleep.

After a leisurely breakfast, and acquiring some snacks and sandwiches for the day, as I knew that lines for transportation and sustenance were very long at the circuit itself. However, for some reason, I thought that two bottles of water was sufficient for the entire day (it is not even close to enough). Soon, it was time to board the plane to Barcelona. Boarding took ages, and since I didn’t check in any luggage and checked in ahead of time, I did not know until I got to the gate and my ticket scanned as having an invalid seat number that they had changed my seat.

this is not important, but here is the very dry sandwich I bought at the Bilbao airport.

After a quick 1-hour flight, I then had to change terminals to catch a train to the circuit’s nearest train station, which was confusing and stressful because on the plane I decided then I wanted to catch the drivers’ parade. Also, I got a bill stuck in the ticket machine and the lady had to come and fish it out for me, and then I had a whale of a time trying to communicate that I wanted a two-way train ticket.

Finally, we were on our way! To get to the circuit, the train passes through Barcelona. The first station in Barcelona we pulled into though, it was packed with people wearing F1 merch, very evidently also heading to the race. I mean, I knew F1 was significantly more popular in Europe than in the U.S, but to be honest, I really did not expect that every single station the train stopped at in the city of Barcelona would be packed with people also going to the race. Needless to stay, I was grateful I got on at the airport, as the train car filled up very quickly once we got into Barcelona.

to be honest, I actually had no idea where I was going when I took this.

After I got off, I realized just how hot it was in Barcelona, despite it being fairly temperate the bast few days in San Sebastián. Also, I had read that there was a free bus from the train station to the circuit, which was a 40 minute walk away, but when I walked out, it was nowhere to be found. As I followed the masses of people, I came across a bunch of people queuing and realized that the bus stop was actually a couple minutes away from the train station. This was not clearly communicated anywhere both online and in person, so it’s quite fortunate I realized this. The line didn’t take super long, although the whole bus process was very chaotic and disorganized, but the bus was thankfully air conditioned.

The bus was supposed to stop at every gate, but it actually stopped unceremoniously us off somewhere near the stadium, and everyone got off. I didn’t really know where I was going, but just tried to head towards the circuit. Eventually, I reached a gate, where I was greeted with another massive line, which was a common theme this day, to get in. The line did move fairly quickly, although at that point, any chance of me making the drivers’ parade was gone, so I meandered my way to my grandstand, which was on the other side of the track.

During this trek, I discovered a couple things:

It seems like the entire population of the Netherlands was at the race.
The lines for everything, especially the bathroom and concession stands, were enormous.
The merch was grossly overpriced, even in comparison to the online website. I saw a hat that went for €45 online being sold for €60. A hat! This really is a pricey sport to follow.
Some grandstands (at least in Barcelona) have their own bathrooms and drink stands that only ticket holders for that grandstand can access and thus have little to no lines.

After that ordeal, I finally made it to my seat, albeit sweating profusely. Luckily, my seat’s location gave me a great vantage point of a bunch of different points of the track, so I could sort of keep track of where the cars were. There was also a screen in front of my grandstand, but since I couldn’t really see the words on it, it only gave me a very general idea of what was happening during the race.

Soon enough, it was lights out and away we(the drivers) went!

I think for the future, I would try to access the radio, either with one of the headsets, or on your phone. Even though there was a speaker behind me with commentary, the combination of the noise from the cars and the stands meant that I could only really hear snippets of the radio. Also, this way you can block out the really weird EDM remixes they play right before the race. Because there were so many people, the service was also not super great, and since my phone and portable charger were overheating, it was kind of difficult to follow the race without a radio, especially near the end.

please enjoy this stop-motion slide of photos I took of seb and danny ric.

I actually didn’t end up needing to use the earplugs I brought, but that might have been more because my seat was kind of high up.

the girls (russell and perez) are fighting (racing)!

Overall, it was a very exciting race, especially for Barcelona, and was so cool to get to see and hear the F1 cars in person. Also, my seat also just happened to be about where Charles engine started to fail (rip).

The race went by pretty quickly, especially since there was no safety car, and soon enough it was over. It took some time for me to leave, because I was hoping to access the track, but I couldn’t find an entrance. After buying some much needed soda (by the end of the race, the grandstand near me ran out of everything except for beer), I decided to just follow the masses of people.

It was here I discovered that when they said that you could go on the track after the race, they actually meant that if you hopped the fence, they would not kick you off the track. My bad, I guess. So I came across a fence that had been flattened to about waist level, so you just had to sit on it and swing your legs to the other side of the fence.

However, disaster struck, as as I was trying to swing my legs over, I ripped my pants, which got caught on the fence, and two girls had to grab my arms and disentangle me. A wholly humiliating experience, considering the many spectators. Luckily, I had brought a white button down to act as a light jacket on the plane, but it was probably not the best cover up, but I did want to see the track.

Despite the little snafu, getting to walk on the track was actually such a cool experience, especially since you can walk to the start line, and along the pit lane, so you get a glimpse into their garages.

Unfortunately by the time I reached the pit lane, all the garages seemed to be in the advanced stages of packing up. Still, super cool though, since I missed the Thursday pit walk. Also, caught a glimpse of Lance Stroll (maybe). I then hopped over another fence to get off the track and try to maybe acquire some new pants or shorts.

mandatory podium photo before I went off on my (fruitless) hunt for new pants.

It was at this point I realized that not a single merchandise stand or store at the race sold any sort of bottom apparel. I am pretty sure I went to every. Single. Store. Even the individual team’s stores. And somehow, not a single one stole shorts or pants or anything of the sort. I at this point was panicking, and what I should have done was just bought a very oversized shirt to wear as a dress, but for some reason I decided I just needed a sweatshirt large enough to wrap around my waist. So, I went into the Red Bull store, and decided to buy a rain jacket. Now, I knew at this point that merch was pretty expensive. But when I went to pay, I found out this rain jacket was 200 euros. A rain jacket. Naturally, I stammered out an excuse about coming back later and walked out, and went straight to the next store, which happened to be Mercedes. I then grabbed the nearest sweatshirt, because I thought it would be cheaper. It turned out to be 140 euros, but I was so desensitized and in such a rush that I immediately paid it.

this actually was not even the very back of the line. jesus christ

some people decided to take some, uh *extra* mementos home with them. which, fair enough. these tickets are expensive.

I then rushed towards the train station, and managed, after much waiting and confusion, to get onboard a bus to the station. Thankfully, since the bus was air conditioned, my portable charger began functioning again, which came especially in handy when I reached the train station. There, I was greeted by once again, a line, this time just to get into the train station, which moved at a snail’s pace. And because neither cabify nor Uber functioned in this tiny Spanish town, my only option was to pray the line moved in time for my flight.

Although there was a separate line for people who bought a two-way train ticket, there really was no difference. We both rushed into the station at the same time, and they let us all in to the train for free. I was really surprised to be quite honest how disorganized it all seemed, as they seemed quite surprised at just how many people were there.

But I even managed to finagle a seat on the train. And by the time the train was approaching the airport, it was basically empty. But around this time, I also needed to figure out a plan for getting through security without revealing I had ripped my pants. Luckily, I had an epiphany. Once at the airport, I turned my tank top into a mini skirt, and used my sweater as a top. Granted, this meant I was sweating profusely through security, but we all make sacrifices sometimes. Although, this fact was definitely not helped by the fact that there seemed to be a lot of staff members from the various teams in the airport, which makes sense since all the teams are based either in the UK or other nearby European countries. I’m pretty sure some of Aston Martin was behind me which was a bit awkward, saw some grumpy looking Williams, alpine and alphatauri as well.

I also remembered that there were randomly a lot of clothing stores in the Barcelona airports. So I prayed that when I got to the airport the clothing stores were still open so I could buy a dress or something. Plus, I really liked that shirt I was using as a mini skirt. Thankfully, the odds were in my favor at this point in the day, and I ran straight to Mango, and brought a black dress.

When I got on my flight, I then remembered another fact. Mercedes is probably one of the least popular teams in Spain, a fact reinforced by the sea of people wearing Ferrari shirts on my flight. Oops.

But before I knew it, we were landing in Bilbao, and then all of a sudden, I was back where I started that morning at 5:45 am, in San Sebastian.