Dutch F1 Grand Prix

This last weekend the three of us did something Alex and I have wanted to do for about seven years - attend an Formula 1 race in person. Our initial plan was to do this last year in Vegas, but the tickets prices were ridiculous. We did the math and figured out it would be cheaper to buy airfare from SFO to Belgium, get a Belgian hotel, and buy tickets to the Belgian grand prix than to buy two cheap tickets to the Vegas race and sleep on my dad’s couch 10 miles away in Henderson, NV.

Being already in Amsterdam made it a no-brainer for us to go to an EU F1 race. And even better… the DUTCH Grand Prix!

For those of you not familiar with Dutch culture, or Formula 1, here’s a little snippet to get you up to speed.

The Dutch people are mostly laid back, but purposeful in daily actions. They are open-minded, but also rule followers. The general philosophy for things like rules and logic are very similar to what Laura and I are used to as Engineers: things are right or wrong, on or off, black or white and there’s little to no grey area. Because of this, Dutch culture is much more direct than US culture as they state facts and typically are not as concerned with offending someone as we are in the US. How can something be considered offensive if it’s true? These are my people! I love the directness. There’s no malice… just truth.

“You smell bad today. Did you not have time to shower?”

“I did not! Thanks for letting me know.”

“Your bike speed is slower than an 8yo Dutch school boy. Are you able to go faster?”

“No I cannot. I will get out of your way and ride with children to build speed”

And then there’s F1. 

Formula 1 seems to be a tear in the Dutch culture continuum. To put it mildly… the Dutch be crazy. Rules and order (and laws) are beaten down and replaced with anarchy and chaos. The fans are a sea of unruly orange who for one weekend a year worship their Dutch hero, Max Verstappen… who is currently the reigning F1 world champ.

Security at the race is tighter than any sporting event I’ve ever been to. No food, no liquids, no umbrellas (this was a problem), no chairs and no cameras other than your phone. The reason for this is that the Dutch fans (did I mention they are crazy) have a history of throwing orange smoke bombs onto the track to show support for Max thereby disrupting the race weekend. Having gone through security for both qualifying and the actual race, I have no idea how you could smuggle in a large, orange smoke bomb without extreme physical pain. And yet… they did! I’m not talking about a little pop with a cubic yard of orange smoke that dissipates in 15 seconds… I’m talking about something I’d storm a beach with a thousand soldier fighting force! One smoke bomb was enough to obscure an entire grandstand!

According to the web, there were 105,000 tickets sold for this race. My guess is that only 99,000 showed up for qualifying on Saturday afternoon. We had general admission tickets, which meant we had no assigned seat (or seat) and were expected to find a place to sit in the sand dunes around the outside edge of the track. We got there a little late, which meant the best place we found was perched on the side of an almost vertical sand dune above Marlborobocht (Marlboro bend) between turns 7 and 8.

Qualifying was great to watch and literally came down to the wire with Max Verstappen getting the fastest lap… and then Lando Norris coming in ~5 seconds later with the fastest lap that got him pole position. Within 10 seconds of that happening 99,000 people rose at once and started to make their way to the exits, and ultimately to the buses that would take us home (there’s no car parking).

Two hours later… we finally boarded a bus. The sea of people moving to the buses was unbelievable. We covered about 1.5 miles from our seats to the bus in those 2 hours. If that were not bad enough, about 1 hour into our 2 hour trek, the wind picked up to about 30mph with 50-60mph gusts and torrential rain. Remember the scene in ‘March of the Penguins’ where the penguins would huddle together and rotate who had to be on the outside of the huddle during the killer arctic storm? That was basically us. The rain was near sideways in the wind, and could sting during the gusts. Laura and I had our new “Amsterdam rain jackets”, but poor Alex had his “California rain jacket”. The poor kid was soaked to the bone. All he could do was use me as a buffer to the wind. With the gusts, it reminded me of living through Hurricane Fran in 1996. Eventually, someone came through the line and called out those of us with kids (not a lot of kids at F1 races) to let us jump the line. Without this, we might have had another 30 mins in the elements before getting on the bus.

We devised a different plan for the race day. We would get there a little earlier to find a better place to sit, we’d sit closer to the exit, and unless Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton were all swapping the lead on every lap to the finish, we’d start making our way to the exit in the last 8-10 laps of the race.

As luck would have it, the finishing order for the race was more or less decided around lap 52 when George Russell and Mercedes made a totally bone-headed decision to pit for a new set of tires they didn’t need and gave up 3 place in the finishing order. It made the decision to start walking to the exit very easy at around lap 64 of 72. As a result, we made it home about 15-30 minutes less than it took us to just get to the bus after qualifying.

Overall, going to a live F1 race is awesome. As a fan, I recommend everyone try to make it happen at least once. The sound of the cars and the sensation of speed is FAR different than what you get on TV. That said, I now agree with Jeremy Clarkson … I much more enjoy watching the race from home. Most race tracks are not well setup for spectating. In the case of Zandvoort Circuit, you’re lucky if you can see about 20% of the track from any seat. There were fans seated around the track that couldn’t even see the track… and were only there to watch one of the many big-screens. Couple that with the food and drink prices, the crowds, the transportation issues, and the cost of the tickets… you have a much better experience watching from your own couch. Super happy Alex, Laura and I got to do this… but not in a hurry to do it again.