It was hot.
31C every day, which is survivable if you can navigate your way through shaded areas, a bit more of a challenge when you are sitting in a grandstand facing the sun…
I would visit Madrid again. It’s a fairly compact city and whilst I didn’t tick off any of the popular tourist spots, I still got to explore a fair bit on foot. Very walkable, with a nice park to get you away from the city centre.
I don’t like being a tourist so tend to want to avoid the more tourist-targetted areas, unfortunately I wasn’t there alone so had to go with the flow a few times, still, it means I will know where NOT to go, or eat, next time I am there.
There was, of course, some gems, some great food, coffee, beers, and overall, even with my very rudimentary, flawed, Spanish, I found people to be helpful and friendly although given the number of F1 tops and caps I saw they no doubt realised that there was a little more money given the 300,000 ‘extra’ tourists the city was hosting, and it’s nice to be nice!
I was there for the new Madrid F1 race which, race wise, was… turgid. The drivers hinted at it beforehand, and among my group we all agreed it was likely to be a Monaco-esque procession, and so it panned out. The organisers have already started talks to make changes to make it better.
Outside of the race it was pretty well organised. I have seen complaints of people having to sit on dusty ground —although that was on a non-grandstand area that is a lot cheaper to access, and was at least ‘stepped’ with wooden planks providing both steps and seats— but overall the only complaint we had was with the lack of shade.
Free water taps (could’ve done with more), free suncream, and the queues at the food and beverage stalls was never too long. Plenty of other little places to roam about but all of it out in the blazing sun. They had four sets of benche to sit at with your food, but the space is massive and they could’ve doubled that and more. As a result a lot of people were sitting wherever there was shade, next to a fence, behind a bin, whatever it took.
We survived the first day (of three) but soon resorted to buying some cheap travel towels to soak and place on our heads for cooling/sun protection. Worked a treat!
The F1 experience is an odd one. It’s my 3rd Grand Prix (the previous two in Singapore) and it’s been over a decade since I last attended and wow do they get their money outta ya! As my mate shrewdly commented, perhaps the lack of seats out here is so that you’ll take your seat at the track so it looks better for the TV audiences…
I enjoyed it though, the atmosphere is congenial, with people from all over the world following their teams and drivers. And hey, who doesn’t like a little bit of sunshine now and then.
What are your thoughts?