I sat in the GC04 grandstand at the new Madring F1 circuit for the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid.
This is my review of this grandstand for anyone else sitting here in the future. It includes a video showing the views from different seats in the stand, my tips on where the best seats are in this stand, a seating chart and tips on how I bought my tickets for the Spanish GP at around half the official price.
GC04 grandstand location
Grandstand GC04 is on the left hand side (outside) of the track at the long sweeping Turn 4. It’s sandwiched between grandstand GC03 (to its right) and GC05 (to its left).
It’s very close to the edge of the track so that gives you a great sense of speed and noise from the F1 cars and the even noisier F2 cars, but because its so close the safety fence can block your view a bit (see the View section lower down).
Not much overtaking is likely to happen at this part of the track. Even though the F1 drivers will be braking right in front of you as they go around the second half of Turn 4 to slow down for Turn 5, it’s not a huge heavy braking zone and it’s a hard place to pass. Not that much overtaking happens anywhere on the track anyway!
Zone
One of the worst things about the race when I went was that you couldn’t go between different fan zones, and instead you were limited to the zone your ticket / stand was in. GC04 is located in the Barrio Fan Zone which is one of the smallest fan zones at the track, and there wasn’t much to do here apart from buy food or some overpriced merch.
The best way to access this stand is using entrance Gate C2. But I mistakenly got off the metro at the Feria de Madrid station, and because the security wouldn’t let me enter via gate C1 I then had to walk about 40 minutes on the streets to get to C2.
The best way to get to gate C2 is to use the Mar de Cristal metro stop instead which is only a 20 minute walk.
GC04 is part of the Zone C Alta velocidad Bronze stands, and confusingly is shown as stand number 4A on the map on the Madring website, which is also called Curva 4a Bronze.
Grandstand tickets - Madring F1
I bought my tickets about 1 week before the race using ViaGoGo, and the weekend ticket I bought on there was about half the official price, so I saved a few hundred Euros. And on ViaGoGo you can also get single-day tickets which usually cost even less and mean that you could buy different stands for different days for some variety.
When tickets are sold out elsewhere, ViaGoGo is the best option. I’ve used them numerous times in the past for buying F1 tickets, including my recent trips to Montreal and Silverstone for the F1. They’re the best way I’ve found the get tickets when I’ve left it a bit late and they’re sold out elsewhere.
They usually have tickets for sale right up until the Sunday on the Grand Prix weekend. I’ll happily use them again next time.
Grandstand details
TV Screens
There’s one large TV screen opposite this stand, on the other side of the circuit on top of a large hill. The further to the left you sit, so the higher your seat number, the better your view of the screen is.
Seats
The seats are plastic chairs.
Cover
This grandstand is completely uncovered and has no shade. It faces East, so you get the sun in your face in the morning and it moves around behind you later in to the day.
Even so, it got too hot in this stand, so between F1 session myself and pretty much everyone else got up and left, and tried to find shade in the fan zone.
Grandstand GC04 seating chart
Below is the seating chart for Grandstand GC04 at the Madring Formula 1 circuit.
The grandstand is 20 rows high – Row 1 is lowest down at the front and Row 20 is highest up at the back.
Seat numbers begin at 1 and go up from left to right (if you imagine you are standing on the circuit looking at the grandstand).
View
On the circuit map below I’ve highlighted the areas of the track you can see from this stand in green:
From this stand your view mainly consists of seeing the cars slowing down at the end of Turn 4 right in front of you, as they approach turn 5. When you look to your left you can just about see some of the entry of Turn 5, but not a lot.
The safety fence can block your view when you are looking to your left and right, especially in the lower rows.
This is a narrow part of track and to be honest there’s not a huge amount to see here, so it’s important to try and get a seat with a better view of the TV screen so you can keep up with the action more easily.
In the video below I’ve filmed the view from a number of different seats to give you an idea of what to expect when sitting in this grandstand. The clips were filmed from the following seats:
- Seat 7 Row 1
- Seat 9 Row 12
- Seat 55 Row 15
- Seat 84 Row 20
Best seats
I’d prefer to go for seats in the highest row possible and as far to the left as possible (higher seat numbers) to get a better view of the TV screen and of the cars as they enter Turn 5.
