Italian Grand Prix Advice
Discussion
Hi All,
Better half got me tickets for this years Italian GP for my birthday. We have seats on the main straight, they were pretty cheap so time will tell what they will be like.
Anyway, I haven't been to a GP before and am looking for advice on what to see, do, look out for etc other than the race obviously. We are getting to Milan on either the Wednesday or Thursday. I would quite like to walk the track and the old banking (if that's possible)? If you go on the Thursday or earlier is it better for getting a wander around / meeting people or are they pretty strict all the time? Also any advice on where to stay in Milan and travel to the circuit.
Cheers
Better half got me tickets for this years Italian GP for my birthday. We have seats on the main straight, they were pretty cheap so time will tell what they will be like.
Anyway, I haven't been to a GP before and am looking for advice on what to see, do, look out for etc other than the race obviously. We are getting to Milan on either the Wednesday or Thursday. I would quite like to walk the track and the old banking (if that's possible)? If you go on the Thursday or earlier is it better for getting a wander around / meeting people or are they pretty strict all the time? Also any advice on where to stay in Milan and travel to the circuit.
Cheers
Thanks mate, yeah really looking forward to it. Book F1 is where we got the tickets, they looked ok, reckoned I could wander about during the practice sessions to see them from different parts of the track. Don't think the seats are too far from the podium actually, they are part of the main grandstand but are like the cheap seats in front of it. That's good to know about Thursday. Can you even go to another grandstand for qualifying or is it just for practice you can sit where you like?
paulyv said:
Take some coverage with you - hat, sun screen, we used a flag as well...flippin' 'eck it was hot!
Plenty of places to get great food all around the track (compared to most other tracks at least).
Milan nearby is a fine city - you will have a great time. One of the top 3 tracks to visit.
There are regular trains to the circuit from Milan central station. All pretty straightforward. Run a search on this site and I am sure you will find a guide to the place.
Nice one thanks for the tips. What are your other top 3 haha? Not too sure where we are going to stay yet but good to know that there are regular trains.Plenty of places to get great food all around the track (compared to most other tracks at least).
Milan nearby is a fine city - you will have a great time. One of the top 3 tracks to visit.
There are regular trains to the circuit from Milan central station. All pretty straightforward. Run a search on this site and I am sure you will find a guide to the place.
Vaud said:
Loads of advice on here, search for Monza or Italian GP.
The racing isn't always the best, but the atmosphere and passion is truly fantastic.
My only addition to previous years is to see if you an get a good overseas data usage for a mobile. Since they stopped renting the portable TV units, you might be reliant on mobile data to listen to English coverage. I can't remember if 5 live take off their geographical barring for the races, I seem to remember that they do. There might be other ways.
Or just watch it and then watch it again when you get home to find out what actually happened.
Yeah I was wondering about that. To make any sense of what is happening (at least for me anyway) you need to know what tyres they are on, do the big screens show the same data as you get on the TV?The racing isn't always the best, but the atmosphere and passion is truly fantastic.
My only addition to previous years is to see if you an get a good overseas data usage for a mobile. Since they stopped renting the portable TV units, you might be reliant on mobile data to listen to English coverage. I can't remember if 5 live take off their geographical barring for the races, I seem to remember that they do. There might be other ways.
Or just watch it and then watch it again when you get home to find out what actually happened.
Thought I would do a little write up of my own for people next year as researching stuff online before hand was a big help to me but I found some of the older info to be no longer true so here's an up to date experience.
As stated above we had tickets for the main straight bleachers. Bought the tickets about a year ago when you still got a proper amount of Euros for a pound so they worked out about £90 each which was fantastic value. The seats were inline with 6th / 7th on the grid so we got a great view of the start and there was a big screen pretty much straight across from us. Its probably easiest if I go through the weekend day by day, no photos at the moment, I'll maybe put some up later when I get round to getting the photos off my camera.
Thursday
We arrived in Milan on Tuesday night, we made a holiday out of the weekend so were keen to do plenty of other sight seeing too, went to lake como on the Wednesday for a trip which was nice and the train went on the same line so it was a useful recce of the station. We stayed in an air bnb fairly central in Milan, about 10 mins on the tube to the train stations.
We took a train from central station to Monza mid afternoon. As a general note the trains are pretty good and regular but I found it a bit difficult to know which one to go on as the fact they stopped at Monza wasn't always clear. There seemed to be a large train, the final destination escapes me now, running at 20 past the hour every hour that went to Monza. When we got to Monza station that's where the fun and games started. The shuttle bus does not operate on the Thursday and there were no signs or anything to indicate there was a Grand Prix on. We followed the crowd outside the station to the bus stop where we had to wait an eternity for a service bus. It drove for a while and we followed the masses again when people started to jump off. From there we just followed the crowd as there were no signs until you got really close to the track. All the roads in the park seem to converge on a kind of main entrance South of Paribolica, there, there's a road for cars and a road for pedestrians, they kind of do a half arsed bag search when they feel like it too. From there it was 10 min walk to the actual entrance (well the one we went to, like I said we were just following the crowd at this point) which turned out to be right behind the stand we were in beside the pit straight. The road continued under the track and took you out in the paddock. They weren't interested in seeing your ticket so I guess anyone could rock up.
As getting there took a little longer than we thought we went straight to the pit walk, again not much in the way of signage we found out where to go from a guy at one of the merchandise stalls. You do need your ticket to get into the pit lane and they search your bags a bit more thoroughly. The pit lane itself was a bit of a scrum as you can probably imagine, managed to get JBs autograph though! Up at the business end around Ferrari and Mercedes though you couldn't move. Worth noting, we spoke to a few people after that weren't allowed into the pit walk as they stopped letting people around 5 o clock even though the advertised time is 4 - 6, so be there early.
After that we walked past the paddock to the back straight found a beer tent and just chilled on some of the seats as it was a lovely evening, I went for a short walk to one of the straights of the old track. The security guard said I could walk round it anytime through the weekend though so I didn't bother going to the banking... Getting home was a bit like getting there, retraced our steps for a bit till we found a bus stop which eventually came and took us back to the station.
Friday
Went from central station again. Met a couple of lads on the train who had tickets for the shuttle bus. The shuttle bus isn't free as some older posts online suggest. You can either buy them from people outside the bus at Monza station or you can buy a combined train and shuttle bus ticket from the Trenord machines at the station. That works out a bit cheaper. As a bit of background there seems to be 3 train companies, TrenItalia, TreNord and another one, TreNord seem to do the more local trains, TrenItalia do the regional ones and the other one does the intercity / country ones. TreNord have blue ticket machines and they are the ones what do the combined tickets with the shuttle bus. I never did find out if you were allowed to buy a ticket from one company and go on a another companies train, the tickets generally don't have times or seats on them they just have A - B, never had a problem though as long as you remember to validate your ticket on one of the little boxes on the platform the conductors didn't seem to care.
So, got on the shuttle bus, still no signs or anything but someone I spoke to on the Thursday said when you get off the train at Monza turn right at the bottom of the stairs off the platform instead of left to the main entrance and the shuttle buses are out the back in the car park. This turned out to be true so on I got. Dropped us off in the middle of the park, I recognised the bit from walking past it the previous day and walked to the same entrance. Went to find where our seats were for future reference to no avail as the stand and seat numbers hadn't been put up yet and the stewards had no idea (this is a recurring theme!). You can sit anywhere you like on the Friday apart from the main grandstand so I wandered around the whole track. Spent FP1 on the pit straight, first corner and the lesmo - ascari straight, watched some GP2 from the second corner and Lesmo corners. Went to one of the stands at Ascari for FP2 which had a cracking view (and the accompanying ticket price if you want there all weekend). From there I wandered down the back straight to Paribolica on the inside of the track where you get really close to the cars and finished up by the pit entrance. Got some good photos and its just generally a nice place to wander around, plenty of beer / water / food stalls on the go, watch which one you go to though as some are cheaper than others. For water there are also loads of taps dotted around, plenty of folk were using them and I'm still living.
On the banking front, on my travels I stumbled upon a hole in the fence around the bit where it goes over the current track but got promptly chased off, so much for the you can go on it all weekend! Probably fair enough as if you climbed to the top of it on the bridge there isn't much stopping you from falling onto the track below! I did get on it on Sunday though but more of that later.
On the way back to the shuttle bus, signs had miraculously appeared, seemed to my limited sense of direction to put us a pretty convoluted way but got there in the end.
Saturday
Didn't bother with FP3 as I had seen everything I wanted to on the Friday so we just timed it to go for qualifying. This is where the fun started. We went to central station as normal but there were no trains to Monza! I think there were a couple earlier in the morning but I heard from people later on that they didn't get on them as they were full. So we had to go back on the tube and go to Garibaldi station (the other main station in Milan). Garibaldi had a lot more of the local TreNord trains and was a treat, the ticket inspectors knew what train was going where and which platform we needed to go to, even advised us to run! After that it was as per we had been doing, shuttle bus from Monza, there were signs by this point and a walk to our usual entrance.
We found our seats (they had finally got round to numbering the stands) and watched quali. The view from the bleachers is ok, if you looked sideways you could pretty much see paribolica and nearly down to turn 1. The big screen positioning was great though and we could see who was coming out the end of the pit lane. We were pretty near the back of the bleacher though which helped, right at the front the view wouldn't be so good. For the money I couldn't fault them, I was quite smug knowing that the people at the front of the stand behind us a mere 6ft above us had paid several hundred pounds more!
On the crowd, I thought it was quite funny when I got home and watched the race on the TV all you could see were hoards of Ferrari fans, it didn't seem like that when we were there, there were a LOT of Brits there, not sure if Book F1 maybe get whole sections of the stands but pretty much everyone in our section was British!
Getting back wasn't a problem as we had kind of sussed it out by then, we stuck around for a while after quali to avoid the mad rush and it was pretty painless (apart from my feet which were killing me by this point, poor footwear selection!)
Sunday
Had heard various myths and rumours ranging from there are no trains from central station again to there are loads but they all go to the mythical Bissono station by the Lesmos that only opens on the Sunday. We opted to go back to the Garibaldi station again as it was closer on the tube and pain free on the Saturday. It turned out to be that way again and we got to the track on our train / shuttle bus combo (think it was €8 return).
It was a lot busier as you would imagine, think a lot of the locals just go for the race. We took a picnic on the Sunday as the food was a bit overpriced for what you got. We did find plenty of it though and the ques weren't as bad as I had imagined given some of the reviews I had read. What didn't help was you needed to pay for a ticket for what you wanted then que again to swap the ticket for the items, some people couldn't get the hang of this as well as a continental approach to queing made it pretty busy but nothing outrageous. Beer was cold and not too expensive, €5 for a pint or €8 for a big glass, think it was a litre, a bit more expensive than home prices but compared to Milan and Italy in general prices its about the going rate. There's a wooded bit behind our stand where loads of people were sitting / sleeping in the shade which was quite nice. While I'm on about facilities I didn't find the toilets too bad either, most of them are portaloo type things which do smell a bit in the 30 degree heat but nothing too hideous and the ques weren't bad either. If you're fussy there were a couple of proper portacabin type toilet blocks complete with a full time cleaner that were pretty sanitary.
Onto the race itself, snooze fest, but the build up and start were great. As I mentioned saw plenty of the action on the big screen. The track invasion at the end was pretty annoying. The guards got all set up to open the gates but wouldn't open them, even when people were streaming up the road from turn 1 they wouldn't open them, I dont think they had the key, eventually they got the big outer fence open and people were climbing over the inner fence, by that time any hope of getting under the podium was lost. It did make me laugh, the locals had no problem with voicing their opinion and attempting to kick the gates down as the guards stood back powerless, you would probably get lifted for that here! Did get pretty close to the podium in the end though and got a good view.
After that we walked backwards round the track to Paribolica, got onto the small bit of banking behind paribolica before a fence and security guard where loads of people were trying to run up it, its damned steep, the photos don't do it justice! Continued walking round the track past Ascari, then we decided to go for this mythical Biassono station at the Lesmos. Conveniently for me that took us past my hole in the fence to the banking again (my better half wasn't best amused as she didn't understand my fascination with old concrete). No security guards this time (I had noted them and the feds making a mass exodus by Paribolica earlier on). There were a few folk walking, climbing and biking round the banking, it was a bit harder to get to the top without a fence to cling onto but I got there and got some good photos.
The mythical station turns out to be real, its actually beside one of the camp sites, and we got a train there back to central no problem at all. I never found out if it runs at other times during the weekend or if it's just Sunday but if you are sitting at turn 2 or the lesmos it would be closer than the shuttle bus. For where were were sitting and Ascari it would probably be 6 and half a dozen time wise.
All in all it was a cracking experience despite the snoozefest race, the atmosphere was good, people friendly and Monza park it just generally a nice place to wander around. The organisation is pretty typically Italian, that's to say a bit chaotic and no one really knows whats happening, we got by by hearing things on the grapevine and by winging it, plenty of fellow brits going about to ask. There is a fair amount of walking to do regardless of how you get to the track so wear suitable footwear (unlike me). Top tips would be take a picnic, its cheaper and while the food isn't bad its pretty samey after a while (pizza, foccica, burgers or hot dogs, usual kind of fayre although the pizza was good) don't take beer as the draught there is freezing cold and not too pricey. Go to Garibaldi station if you are staying in Milan, trains seemed more frequent and better organised than central station and TreNord have a ticket office there where you could ask about things and get the combined shuttle bus tickets more easily. That said if you like architecture check out central station as it is a beautiful huge and very impressive old building, more like a cathedral inside than a station. Final one would be, if possible, take a bike! Loads of folk were biking around the roads behind the stands and just chaining their bikes to the stand, no one seemed to have a problem with this and it would be great to bike a lap of the track afterwards, as a lot of people were doing.
As I said I'll eventually get round to downloading all the pics from my camera and will upload some of the view from various points. Hopefully this massive blurb will be of use to someone in the future.
As stated above we had tickets for the main straight bleachers. Bought the tickets about a year ago when you still got a proper amount of Euros for a pound so they worked out about £90 each which was fantastic value. The seats were inline with 6th / 7th on the grid so we got a great view of the start and there was a big screen pretty much straight across from us. Its probably easiest if I go through the weekend day by day, no photos at the moment, I'll maybe put some up later when I get round to getting the photos off my camera.
Thursday
We arrived in Milan on Tuesday night, we made a holiday out of the weekend so were keen to do plenty of other sight seeing too, went to lake como on the Wednesday for a trip which was nice and the train went on the same line so it was a useful recce of the station. We stayed in an air bnb fairly central in Milan, about 10 mins on the tube to the train stations.
We took a train from central station to Monza mid afternoon. As a general note the trains are pretty good and regular but I found it a bit difficult to know which one to go on as the fact they stopped at Monza wasn't always clear. There seemed to be a large train, the final destination escapes me now, running at 20 past the hour every hour that went to Monza. When we got to Monza station that's where the fun and games started. The shuttle bus does not operate on the Thursday and there were no signs or anything to indicate there was a Grand Prix on. We followed the crowd outside the station to the bus stop where we had to wait an eternity for a service bus. It drove for a while and we followed the masses again when people started to jump off. From there we just followed the crowd as there were no signs until you got really close to the track. All the roads in the park seem to converge on a kind of main entrance South of Paribolica, there, there's a road for cars and a road for pedestrians, they kind of do a half arsed bag search when they feel like it too. From there it was 10 min walk to the actual entrance (well the one we went to, like I said we were just following the crowd at this point) which turned out to be right behind the stand we were in beside the pit straight. The road continued under the track and took you out in the paddock. They weren't interested in seeing your ticket so I guess anyone could rock up.
As getting there took a little longer than we thought we went straight to the pit walk, again not much in the way of signage we found out where to go from a guy at one of the merchandise stalls. You do need your ticket to get into the pit lane and they search your bags a bit more thoroughly. The pit lane itself was a bit of a scrum as you can probably imagine, managed to get JBs autograph though! Up at the business end around Ferrari and Mercedes though you couldn't move. Worth noting, we spoke to a few people after that weren't allowed into the pit walk as they stopped letting people around 5 o clock even though the advertised time is 4 - 6, so be there early.
After that we walked past the paddock to the back straight found a beer tent and just chilled on some of the seats as it was a lovely evening, I went for a short walk to one of the straights of the old track. The security guard said I could walk round it anytime through the weekend though so I didn't bother going to the banking... Getting home was a bit like getting there, retraced our steps for a bit till we found a bus stop which eventually came and took us back to the station.
Friday
Went from central station again. Met a couple of lads on the train who had tickets for the shuttle bus. The shuttle bus isn't free as some older posts online suggest. You can either buy them from people outside the bus at Monza station or you can buy a combined train and shuttle bus ticket from the Trenord machines at the station. That works out a bit cheaper. As a bit of background there seems to be 3 train companies, TrenItalia, TreNord and another one, TreNord seem to do the more local trains, TrenItalia do the regional ones and the other one does the intercity / country ones. TreNord have blue ticket machines and they are the ones what do the combined tickets with the shuttle bus. I never did find out if you were allowed to buy a ticket from one company and go on a another companies train, the tickets generally don't have times or seats on them they just have A - B, never had a problem though as long as you remember to validate your ticket on one of the little boxes on the platform the conductors didn't seem to care.
So, got on the shuttle bus, still no signs or anything but someone I spoke to on the Thursday said when you get off the train at Monza turn right at the bottom of the stairs off the platform instead of left to the main entrance and the shuttle buses are out the back in the car park. This turned out to be true so on I got. Dropped us off in the middle of the park, I recognised the bit from walking past it the previous day and walked to the same entrance. Went to find where our seats were for future reference to no avail as the stand and seat numbers hadn't been put up yet and the stewards had no idea (this is a recurring theme!). You can sit anywhere you like on the Friday apart from the main grandstand so I wandered around the whole track. Spent FP1 on the pit straight, first corner and the lesmo - ascari straight, watched some GP2 from the second corner and Lesmo corners. Went to one of the stands at Ascari for FP2 which had a cracking view (and the accompanying ticket price if you want there all weekend). From there I wandered down the back straight to Paribolica on the inside of the track where you get really close to the cars and finished up by the pit entrance. Got some good photos and its just generally a nice place to wander around, plenty of beer / water / food stalls on the go, watch which one you go to though as some are cheaper than others. For water there are also loads of taps dotted around, plenty of folk were using them and I'm still living.
On the banking front, on my travels I stumbled upon a hole in the fence around the bit where it goes over the current track but got promptly chased off, so much for the you can go on it all weekend! Probably fair enough as if you climbed to the top of it on the bridge there isn't much stopping you from falling onto the track below! I did get on it on Sunday though but more of that later.
On the way back to the shuttle bus, signs had miraculously appeared, seemed to my limited sense of direction to put us a pretty convoluted way but got there in the end.
Saturday
Didn't bother with FP3 as I had seen everything I wanted to on the Friday so we just timed it to go for qualifying. This is where the fun started. We went to central station as normal but there were no trains to Monza! I think there were a couple earlier in the morning but I heard from people later on that they didn't get on them as they were full. So we had to go back on the tube and go to Garibaldi station (the other main station in Milan). Garibaldi had a lot more of the local TreNord trains and was a treat, the ticket inspectors knew what train was going where and which platform we needed to go to, even advised us to run! After that it was as per we had been doing, shuttle bus from Monza, there were signs by this point and a walk to our usual entrance.
We found our seats (they had finally got round to numbering the stands) and watched quali. The view from the bleachers is ok, if you looked sideways you could pretty much see paribolica and nearly down to turn 1. The big screen positioning was great though and we could see who was coming out the end of the pit lane. We were pretty near the back of the bleacher though which helped, right at the front the view wouldn't be so good. For the money I couldn't fault them, I was quite smug knowing that the people at the front of the stand behind us a mere 6ft above us had paid several hundred pounds more!
On the crowd, I thought it was quite funny when I got home and watched the race on the TV all you could see were hoards of Ferrari fans, it didn't seem like that when we were there, there were a LOT of Brits there, not sure if Book F1 maybe get whole sections of the stands but pretty much everyone in our section was British!
Getting back wasn't a problem as we had kind of sussed it out by then, we stuck around for a while after quali to avoid the mad rush and it was pretty painless (apart from my feet which were killing me by this point, poor footwear selection!)
Sunday
Had heard various myths and rumours ranging from there are no trains from central station again to there are loads but they all go to the mythical Bissono station by the Lesmos that only opens on the Sunday. We opted to go back to the Garibaldi station again as it was closer on the tube and pain free on the Saturday. It turned out to be that way again and we got to the track on our train / shuttle bus combo (think it was €8 return).
It was a lot busier as you would imagine, think a lot of the locals just go for the race. We took a picnic on the Sunday as the food was a bit overpriced for what you got. We did find plenty of it though and the ques weren't as bad as I had imagined given some of the reviews I had read. What didn't help was you needed to pay for a ticket for what you wanted then que again to swap the ticket for the items, some people couldn't get the hang of this as well as a continental approach to queing made it pretty busy but nothing outrageous. Beer was cold and not too expensive, €5 for a pint or €8 for a big glass, think it was a litre, a bit more expensive than home prices but compared to Milan and Italy in general prices its about the going rate. There's a wooded bit behind our stand where loads of people were sitting / sleeping in the shade which was quite nice. While I'm on about facilities I didn't find the toilets too bad either, most of them are portaloo type things which do smell a bit in the 30 degree heat but nothing too hideous and the ques weren't bad either. If you're fussy there were a couple of proper portacabin type toilet blocks complete with a full time cleaner that were pretty sanitary.
Onto the race itself, snooze fest, but the build up and start were great. As I mentioned saw plenty of the action on the big screen. The track invasion at the end was pretty annoying. The guards got all set up to open the gates but wouldn't open them, even when people were streaming up the road from turn 1 they wouldn't open them, I dont think they had the key, eventually they got the big outer fence open and people were climbing over the inner fence, by that time any hope of getting under the podium was lost. It did make me laugh, the locals had no problem with voicing their opinion and attempting to kick the gates down as the guards stood back powerless, you would probably get lifted for that here! Did get pretty close to the podium in the end though and got a good view.
After that we walked backwards round the track to Paribolica, got onto the small bit of banking behind paribolica before a fence and security guard where loads of people were trying to run up it, its damned steep, the photos don't do it justice! Continued walking round the track past Ascari, then we decided to go for this mythical Biassono station at the Lesmos. Conveniently for me that took us past my hole in the fence to the banking again (my better half wasn't best amused as she didn't understand my fascination with old concrete). No security guards this time (I had noted them and the feds making a mass exodus by Paribolica earlier on). There were a few folk walking, climbing and biking round the banking, it was a bit harder to get to the top without a fence to cling onto but I got there and got some good photos.
The mythical station turns out to be real, its actually beside one of the camp sites, and we got a train there back to central no problem at all. I never found out if it runs at other times during the weekend or if it's just Sunday but if you are sitting at turn 2 or the lesmos it would be closer than the shuttle bus. For where were were sitting and Ascari it would probably be 6 and half a dozen time wise.
All in all it was a cracking experience despite the snoozefest race, the atmosphere was good, people friendly and Monza park it just generally a nice place to wander around. The organisation is pretty typically Italian, that's to say a bit chaotic and no one really knows whats happening, we got by by hearing things on the grapevine and by winging it, plenty of fellow brits going about to ask. There is a fair amount of walking to do regardless of how you get to the track so wear suitable footwear (unlike me). Top tips would be take a picnic, its cheaper and while the food isn't bad its pretty samey after a while (pizza, foccica, burgers or hot dogs, usual kind of fayre although the pizza was good) don't take beer as the draught there is freezing cold and not too pricey. Go to Garibaldi station if you are staying in Milan, trains seemed more frequent and better organised than central station and TreNord have a ticket office there where you could ask about things and get the combined shuttle bus tickets more easily. That said if you like architecture check out central station as it is a beautiful huge and very impressive old building, more like a cathedral inside than a station. Final one would be, if possible, take a bike! Loads of folk were biking around the roads behind the stands and just chaining their bikes to the stand, no one seemed to have a problem with this and it would be great to bike a lap of the track afterwards, as a lot of people were doing.
As I said I'll eventually get round to downloading all the pics from my camera and will upload some of the view from various points. Hopefully this massive blurb will be of use to someone in the future.
Edited by dazjstuart on Thursday 22 September 11:00
Edited by dazjstuart on Thursday 22 September 11:23
Edited by dazjstuart on Thursday 22 September 11:36
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