We were driving from Barcelona just to watch qualifying Saturday (there were no more tickets for race day!) and I was terrified when I heard there are usually traffic jams and huge queues around the circuit.

Our audacious plan was to wake up at 6AM and drive from Barcelona to Marseille, deal with the orientation, the queues, the traffic, the parking lot, and the overall 🖕 🚗 experience, everything before 2 PM.

Would we make it in time? Reddit had the answer.

Doomed plan… when I went in 2018 it was 3 hours queue to leave the circuit back down the 1 way road. I would say watch it in a bar.

Checks out: it is insane

Obviously if you are flying this circus around the world, inviting 400 thousand car enthusiasts to a remote, agricultural place, with people driving hundreds, some times thousands of miles, to park in an improvised parking lot.

Oh yeah, you can ride the helicopter instead, if you fancy.

Obviously, there will be queues. And carbon monoxide. And sweat and disposable plastic bottles. And disposable “fresh humid air in a can” … 🤯 And all the other emissions and 🌲 unfriendly side effects.

And in the end, …

True we didn’t watch a race. But I know how races go from 📺 TV. The supposedly added benefit of sitting in a stand, and watch up close those 3 corners? 👎

They roar, they’re fast, and then they’re gone. Quite monotonous.

And you get no commentators, no hype, no realtime data, no angles, no replays, no audio, … and no comfort from your couch or even a close by toilet.