2024 F1 Austrian GP

2024 F1 Austrian GP

Late June 2024 I attended my first ever F1 race at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg Austria with my son. Expectations were high since F1 is for many the pinnacle of motor sports. The interest has grown the last years much thanks to the Netflix series and social media coverage. I’m not really the biggest fan and very seldom watches a race online, but I do enjoy keeping up2date on the regulations and technology.

I did not take a lot of pictures as I managed to catch a fever the first day and was walking around like a zombie in 30C+ weather.

There was a lot happening on the track: F1, F2, F3 as well as Porsche Super Cup. Training, qualification and race including sprint race for F1.

When we arrived on Saturday and found our seats for the F3 qualification we were thrilled over how good our seats were…. Perfect view of the start line.

We then realized we had entered the wrong entrance unnoticed by the guards. So for the rest of the weekend we sat baking in the sun in T10 which is the last corner before the finish:

The F3 cars all uses the Same Dallara chassis and Mechacrhome 3.4l V6 engine producing 380hp.

The race was quite eventful. Seems like the more inexperienced drivers are willing to take more chances (or makes more mistakes). Nice to hear some high revving N/A engines as well. Short video of the start.

I have no video of the F2 cars but they use the same Mechachrome V6 as the F3 but with a turbo @ 1.5 bar producing 620hp. There were quite a lot of pops and bangs when hearing them IRL. Really cool and more raw than the F1 cars where the HGU/MGU seems to mellow out the sound by filling the “voids” where ignition,DBW and wg trickery otherwise would be used to keep it in boost.

The Porsche Super Cup was also quite entertaining. More fighting and off road inspired driving among the “Gentlemen drivers” than the Formula cars. Also the sound was surprisingly loud and high pitched. According to what I found online the Super cup cars are the same 485 hp 911 GT3 Cup cars as in the Carrera Cup.

As for F1, the cars (and drivers) are noticeable quicker, but the sound was surprisingly muffled. Sprint race warm up lap:

First lap from Sunday race T10:

As evident by the video, the rumbling sound from the tires hitting the curbs in the braking zone were ruining the show a bit. No surprise T10 is the cheapest of the grand stand tickets :-) It got better when the field was spreading out though.
Video of someone and some other guy where we can actually hear the cars accelerating down the straight:

Compare that to glorious sound of the V10 and V8 N/A engines from the “F1 Legends Parade” earlier that day:

Legends Parade 2024: Participating vehicles and drivers at a glance
Gerhard BERGER in Michael Schumacher’s winning Ferrari (2002 / 3,000 cc / 835 hp)
David COULTHARD (GP winner 2001) in the RB1 (2005 / 3,000 cc / 900 hp)
Emerson FITTIPALDI (GP winner 1972) in his Lotus (1972 / 2,993 cc / 470 hp)
Johnny HERBERT in Elio de Angelis’ winning Lotus (1982 / 2,993 cc / 520 hp)
Patrick FRIESACHER in the RB8 (2012 / 2.400 ccm / 900 PS)

Just listen to this glorious sound of the F2002 Ferrari and imagine how it was back in the days.

Some other observations :

  • It’s not much happening on the outside of the track other than food, drinks and officially licensed merch.
    I talked to a dutch guy in the food queue who had been to 17 GP’s across the world who said that the “this is as good as it gets” for activities off track.
    This is is quite different from NASCAR (Richmond 2007) where the outside area is HUGE with all kinds motor sport related displays and other stuff happening.

  • The pits, cars and team activities were not visible from the track or the outside area. Not even F3 or the Porsche Super Cup. We did not walk around the whole track so we might have missed something. I’m sure you could buy some sort of VIP access for a fortune to get a pit walk.
    This is something that is more accessible in other forms of motor sport (or smaller events…)
    They did however display the legend cars including the prep and test startup of the cars which was nice.

  • The media coverage was huge. We counted 11 choppers and multiple in the air at all times + drones. Many probably VIP tours/transports.

  • It was hard to see anything outside of the grand stands including the monitors. The “General Admission Tickets” only gave access to one cramped part of the track where you had to stand up. Imho having tickets for the grand stands is a must.

All in all this was a nice experience and I can cross F1 off my bucket list. Attending with a fever is not recommended..

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Austrian Grand Prix F1