I sat in grandstand GE24, which is part of the Curva 15A Bronze section, at the Madring circuit for the Spanish Formula 1 Grand Prix in Madrid.
This is my honest review of what it’s like to sit in this stand. Hopefully it helps anyone who already has tickets here, or is weighing up whether to book them.
Below you’ll find a video of the views from different seats, a full seating plan, how I got my tickets for around half the official price, and my tips on where the best seats are.
GE24 grandstand location
Grandstand GE24 is on the right hand side of the Madring circuit, between Turns 14 and 15. It sits directly opposite grandstand GE19 on the other side of the track.
Turns 14 and 15 are both fast corners, so you’ll see the cars carrying a lot of speed through this section. But what you won’t see is overtaking. The track is narrow here, and because the corners are quick it’s not a place where cars can overtake, like most of the Madring. Instead they all fly past this grandstand in single file, one after the other.
Zone
GE24 is in the Madring Norte (North) part of the circuit, inside the Distrito Fan Zone. It’s the largest fan zone at the track, with plenty of food and drink stalls and lots of things to do to fill the time between sessions.
On the Madring website you won’t find GE24 listed under its own name. Instead it’s sold as part of the Curva 15A Bronze section, so look for that when you’re booking.
As GE24 is in the Distrito Fan Zone, you’ll want to use the E gates when you arrive to access it. The quickest way to reach them is from Valdebebas train station, just a short walk away. But the queues to get back into that station at the end of the day were huge. Rather than wait in those, I walked for about half an hour to the San Lorenzo metro station instead, and there was no queue at all when I got there.
Grandstand tickets - Madring F1
I paid roughly half the official price for my Madrid Grand Prix tickets by buying them on the ViaGoGo ticket platform.
I didn’t book until about a week before the race weekend. Leaving it late actually worked in my favour, because prices tend to drop in the weeks before the race. ViaGoGo always has plenty of tickets listed right up to race day, long after other sites have sold out.
If you’re planning to go for a couple of days have a look at their single-day tickets too. They tend to be cheaper, and splitting your weekend across a few different grandstands is a good way to see more of the circuit.
I travel to a lot of F1 races to keep this site up to date, and I’ve used ViaGoGo for tickets loads of times now. I used them for this Madrid F1 trip, and for my recent Grand Prix visits to Montreal and Silverstone. Every purchase with them has been great, and I’ll be using them again for my next race.
Grandstand details
TV Screens
There’s one big TV screen directly opposite this stand, on the other side of the track. It’s large enough that you can see it easily from every seat in the grandstand.
Seats
The seats are plastic chairs.
Cover
Grandstand GE24 has no roof. It faces east, so from the middle of the day onwards the sun is behind you rather than in your face which was good.
That’s better than the stands opposite, which face straight into the afternoon sun. But you’re still fully exposed, and it gets hot. Bring a hat, sun cream and drink plenty of water. I used the breaks between the F1 sessions to find some shade in the fan zone.
Grandstand GE24 seating chart
Below is the seating chart for Grandstand GE24 at the Madring Formula 1 circuit.
The grandstand has 42 rows. Row 1 is at the front and Row 42 is highest up at the back.
The stand is 130 seats wide. If you were standing on the track looking up at the grandstand, seat 1 would be on the far left and seat 130 on the far right.
Accommodation
If you’re heading to Madrid for the Grand Prix and still need somewhere to stay, the map below shows all the accommodation around the Madring circuit (marked with the blue pin).
The track is a little way out of the city centre. Staying nearby is a good shout if you’d rather skip the huge queues for public transport after each day’s running.
Or you can do what I did and base yourself in central Madrid. You get to make the most of the city’s bars, restaurants and nightlife in the evenings, and the metro gets you to and from the track each day pretty easily.
Pan and zoom around the map to see all the places to stay near the circuit:
View
On the circuit map below the parts of the track you can see from this stand are shown in green:
From GE24 you watch the cars come through Turn 14 on your left, run along in front of the stand, and then sweep into Turn 15 on your right. In total you’ll see them for a couple of seconds, no more.
The worst thing about this stand is the big yellow Pirelli pedestrian bridge over the track to the right. It gets in the way of your view of Turn 15 if you sit in the higher rows in seats 1 – 30, which are the seats at the right hand end of the stand when you’re sat down. You can see this in the video below.
If you sit in the lower rows in those same seat numbers, however, then you can see under the bridge and watch the cars as they go round Turn 15.
Because the cars pass by so quickly, the big TV screen opposite comes in handy for following the rest of the race, and you can see it easily wherever you sit.
In the video below I filmed the view from a number of different seats, so you can see how it changes depending on where you are in the stand.
The clips in this video were filmed from the following seats:
- Seat 1 Row 38
- Seat 15 Row 13
- Seat 53 Row 34
- Seat 69 Row 1
- Seat 90 Row 11
- Seat 109 Row 39
- Seat 111 Row 16
- Seat 130 Row 42
Best seats
I felt this grandstand actually had a better view than most of the others on the other side of the track near turns 14 and 15. I definitely preferred it to stands GE18, GE19, GE20 and GE21.
That being said to get the best seats in this grandstand you need to be sitting somehwhere that avoids your view being blocked by the bridge to the right. For that I’d avoid seats 1 to 40 in rows 25 and up. I’d also avoid the front few rows in all seats as the safety fence blocks your view when you look left and right.
Other than that, the rest of the seats in this stand have pretty similar views.
