Qatar GP Parking
If you’re planning on driving to the Qatar Grand Prix at the Lusail International Circuit then you’ll be pleased to know that the official parking is free for ticket holders. That applies to both the Formula 1 and MotoGP.
The free car parks are around the outside of the circuit. You cannot pre-book spaces, and there’s only a limited number, so turning up early will make sure you get a spot and give you a better chance of getting parked closer to your grandstand. The event organisers encourage people to car pool or use the Metro and free shuttle instead to avoid too much traffic – the latter is actually a good option.
But if you plan on driving, there are four of these free spectator car parks around the circuit, and the map below shows their location in pink, the Lusail Hill General Admission area in red and the grandstands in green:
Which parking lot to aim for?
Which car park you should aim for depends on which tickets you have. These are the closest car parks for each grandstand / GA area:
- Main grandstand – Parking A, B or C
- North grandstand – Parking A, B or C
- T2 grandstand – Parking A or B
- T3 grandstand – Parking A or B
- T16 grandstand – Parking D
- General Admission Lusail Hill – Parking A
To be honest though, whether or not you get to park in the one closest to your stand will probably be out of your control. When you arrive at the circuit there are marshals and police guiding you in and randomly closing some of the roads. You can try and tell them you want to park in a specific area, but I imagine you’ll be told to park where they want you to.
But the earlier you get there the better your chance of getting parked closed to where you want to go.
Getting to Lusail circuit by car
If like most of us you’re coming from Doha, you’ll take the Al Khor Coastal road to get to the Lusail circuit for the Qatar GP. The best exit to use closest to the circuit would be 32, which you can see at the top of the map above.
However, last time that was closed off by police on the race weekend, and traffic was diverted a longer way round via Exits 29 or 29B depending on which way you came from. Following the signs for ‘spectators’ eventually gets you there.
This was a much longer route and added at least 20 minutes to the journey time, especially with slow moving traffic heading to the circuit all following the same route.
On a clear run any other day it’s only about 25 minutes from Doha to the track. But on race weekend, whatever Google maps says is your journey time, add at least 30 minutes to it to make sure you’ve got enough time to get there.
Qatar GP interactive map directions
It’s worth checking out the interactive map for the Qatar GP to see what’s on around the circuit over the weekend.
If you click on your seating area on the map you can ask it to give you directions by car and it will do so on Google Maps, using pre-planned routes.
Here’s an example of the directions it gave me from Doha to the Main grandstand. As you can see it takes me off the Al Khor Coastal Road at exit 29B, a little bit of a long way round.
Leaving the car parks
If you leave at the end of the F1 race with everyone else you can expect a bit of a delay getting out of your car park. So if you’ve got time, I’d hang around at the track for a while and make the most of the music concerts at the end of the night. That way, when you come to leave, most of the traffic should have gone.
