By Ian Lockwood
May 23 2013
Review of my trip to the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix
Each year a group of friends and I travel to a Grand Prix. Having got thoroughly soaked camping at Silverstone in 2012, we decided to revisit the Spanish Grand Prix - a venue we last went to 10 years ago.
Flights were booked before Christmas 2012 - an Easyjet flight into Barcelona. As we had already seen the sights of Barcelona itself on a previous trip, we decided to instead stay out of the city in Pineda de Mar on the Costa Brava from where there is quick access to the circuit which is located to the North East of Barcelona.
After a little research we selected a company called Suitors via the web at www.montmelotickets.com to provide hotel accomodation, transfers to and from the circuit each day, and our F1 tickets. From the moment we booked the service from these guys was superb. Many thanks to Fritz and his team - I would certainly recommend them.
Upon arrival at Barcelona airport we headed to the terminal's train station. €4.55 bought a ticket from the airport to Pineda de Mar which involves a short trip into Barcelona, then a slower train along the coast. Total journey time was around 1hr 40 minutes, and was accompanied by various musicians busking (illegally) through the carriages.
It was a short walk (still managed to stop for a couple of drinks) from Pineda de Mar Station to our hotel - the 4 Star Golden Taurus Park Resort. The hotel is very much geared to the holiday market, with a mixed clientelle of British, French, German and other nationalities. Service at the hotel was excellent. It was very clean throughout and rooms were spacious with flat screen TV's with some English station and also had fridges. We stayed half board - buffet food was plentiful with a good variety for a short stay. The hotel featured the usual holiday resort style evening cabaret entertainment, and drinks were reasonably priced - €2.50 for a large beer.
On Friday morning we were collected by from the hotel at around 9am for the 35-40 minute journey to the circuit. This got us there just in time for Free Practice One. Worth noting that the circuit has a policy of no bottles or cans being taken through the gates. We knew this in advance, and had taken our beer in plastic bottles (Spain does sell beer in plastic bottles at some supermarkets, but we just decanted it from galss bottles into fizzy water bottles each morning). At the Circuit De Catalunya, a 3 day grandstand ticket gives you access to any grandstand on the Friday (although no-one was checking tickets, so even a General Admittance ticket would allow you in to all the stands). We watched the first session from the "stadium section" Stand G which gives a good view of several corners of sector 3:-
For GP2 Practice we moved around to the main straight grandstand. Here you get a view of the pits, but in my opinion, the view is poor from here due to the angle of the stand and the narrowness of the track.
From here we also got a good view of the stand we had chosen for the race - Stand L (to the right of the position marker pole) - It looked quite high:-
Walking on around to it later proved that it was indeed very high!
The description from www.montmelotickets.com was very accurate:-
"The grandstand L is located on the outside of the Seat left-hander, a 90km/h 2nd gear left-hander hairpin and the slowest corner on the circuit. This grandstand, which can accommodate approximately 3000 spectators, is exceptionally high and arguably offers you the best panoramic view on the circuit. You can see the main straight, the whole Elf Corner, the entrance to the Renault Corner, a section of the Repsol Corner and obviously the Seat Corner right down to Würth Corner."
Some views from our seats:-
Turn 3 - behind stand L
Some other pics:-
Post race beer back at hotel
Hometime :(
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