I sat in grandstand GE16 at the new Madring circuit for the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid.
Hopefully this review will help anyone else who has ticketes or is thinking about choosing tickets to this stand at a future F1 race. I’ve included a video which shows the views from various seats, information on how I managed to get cheap tickets, a full seating plan and my top tips on picking the best seats in this grandstand.
GE16 grandstand location
Grandstand GE16 is on the left hand side of the Madring circuit at the braking zone for Turn 13.
Turn 13 is a fairly tight 90 degree left hand corner. The cars approach it from the high speed banked La Monumental Turn 12, but because that corner is so fast they never seemed to be close enough to one-another to try and mount an overtaking move on the brakes in to Turn 13.
So like the rest of the Madring circuit, don’t expect to see much overtaking if you sit here.
Zone
GE16 is in Madring Norte (North) and is in the Distrito Fan Zone which is the biggest fan zone at the track. That meant there were a lot of other things to see and do when you’re weren’t sat in the grandstand, and loads of places to get food and drink nearby.
The easiest way to get to this stand when arriving at the track is to use the E entrance gates. Don’t do what I did and try and enter on the other side of the circuit through the D gates – they won’t let you in.
The best way to get to the E gates is to use the Valdebabas train station which is only a 10 minute walk away. However there were huge queues to get in to the Valdebabas station at the end of the day and I couldn’t face that, so instead I walked for half an hour to the San Lorenzo metro station where there was no queue at all.
On the Madring website GE16 is actually shown as the Curva 13 Silver Plus stand (may be called Recta 13 Gold stand this year…TBC) in the Curva enlazadas Zone E part of the track.
Grandstand tickets - Madring F1
I managed to buy my tickets for the Madrid F1 race for around half the official price on the ViaGoGo ticket platform.
I bought my tickets last minute – just 1 week before the race – but that’s when prices seemed lower and ViaGoGo always has a good selection of tickets on sale right up until the Sunday of the race weekend, even when eveywhere else is sold out.
It’s also worth checking out their one-day ticket options as they’re likely to be cheaper and would give you flexibility to try different grandstands on different days, just for a change of view.
I’ve used ViaGoGo lots of times over the past few F1 seasons to buy F1 tickets, including for this trip to Madrid and other recent trips to Canada and Silverstone for the Grand Prix there. I’ve always had a great experience buying tickets with them and I’ll happily be using them next time.
Grandstand details
TV Screens
There are actually three TV screens visible from this stand – two directly opposite and one at the left hand end of the grandstand:
Seats
The seats are plastic chairs.
Cover
This grandstand is one of the few covered stands at the track. However as the roof is quite high over the front of the stand, in the afternoon you need to be in the top half of the stand to be in the shade – rows 13 and up ideally.
But even in those higher rows, seat numbers 100 and up will still be in the sun at the end of the day. So to be in the shade for as long as possible go for seat numbers 1 to 100 in rows 13 and up.
I took this photo at around 5:30pm and you can see the bottom half of the rows are still in the sun:
Grandstand GE16 seating chart
Below is the seating chart for Grandstand GE16 at the Madring Formula 1 circuit.
The grandstand has 25 rows – Row 1 is at the front and Row 25 is higher up at the back.
The stand is 116 seats wide. Seat numbers start at 1 on the left side of the stand and increase as you move to the right (if you are standing on the track looking up at the grandstand.)
Accommodation
If you’re travelling to Madrid for the Formula 1 and need accommodation, the map below shows all the places to stay surrounding the Madring circuit (the blue pin). The track is a short way outside of the city, but if you want to try and avoid the queues for train stations at the end of the days, then staying close is a good idea
Alternatively I stayed in the centre of Madrid itself so I could enjoy the city’s nightlife, bars and restaurants when I wasn’t at the track. I then used the metro to commute to and from the track each day.
Pan and zoom around the map below to see all of the accommodation options around the track:
View
On the circuit map below the parts of the track you can see from this stand are shown in green:
From this grandstand you have a view of the cars braking for and turning in to Turn 13.
Unfortunately there was a big red Santander pedestrian bridge directly to the right of this stand which blocked you view of the cars approaching the braking zone, especially if you were in the lower seat numbers:
And then as you look to your left the structure holding the TV screen, and the front of this grandstand, blocks your view of the cars once they’ve passed the apex of Turn 13.
However if you then sit too far to the right the structure holding the TV screen blocks your view of Turn 13:
In the video below I’ve filmed the views from this grandstand from a number of different seating positions to give you an idea of how the view changes depending on which seat you’re in
The clips in this video were filmed from the following seats:
- Seat 30 Row 23
- Seat 25 Row 9
- Seat 47 Row 1
- Seat 69 Row 8
- Seat 101 Row 11
- Seat 231 Row 22
Best seats
If you’re paying the extra price to sit in a grandstand with a roof over it then you want to make sure you’re in the shade for as long as possible.
So to achieve that, and to avoid the red bridge blocking your view too much, I’d go for seat numbers 50 to 100 in rows 13 and up.
