You are now the reader of a blog run by two legitimate F1 fans. Bet you didn’t see that coming, eh?

For some background, we have a group of friends that are all F1 fanatics, and we congregated at local sports pubs each weekend to watch the races when we lived in Shenzhen. Prior to Shenzhen, I was familiar with F1 and watched it from time to time, but certainly wasn’t a diehard fan. Julie knew there were cars involved, and something about Monaco, and maybe the name Lewis Hamilton, but that’s it.

In Shenzhen, we dutifully watched many races with our friends, but never made the leap to fly to watch a race in person, something that group does several times per year. Now that we’re in Shanghai, location of the Chinese Grand Prix, we thought it the perfect excuse to attend our first live event, a weekend of high-pitched F1 engines and tire squealing.

Buying Tickets to the Chinese Grand Prix

Tickets are available a few months before any F1 race, and one of our friends from Shenzhen was the coordinator, arranging all nine tickets for the group. It was their third year flying to Shanghai for F1, so we let the experts handle the details.

The tickets can be purchased directly through the F1 website, and they opted for seating in grandstand K, which provided the ideal viewing for the longest straight in all of F1 and a sharp hairpin corner with lots of overtaking possibilities. Prices vary for each race (thankfully China happens to be one of the cheapest deals in F1), but our F1 tickets for the Chinese Grand Prix cost about $150US each, for the full weekend of activities.

Of course, if you want to go crazy, there are about a dozen “F1 Experiences” available as upgrades, everything from special club access during the race to getting the chance to explore the pit lane for a whole day and see the teams up close. Unsurprisingly, the special experiences come at a cost, upwards of almost $7,000 per person. Hard pass.

Getting to and from the Shanghai Circuit

The Shanghai Circuit is a bit outside of the center of the city, but it is located on line 11 on the metro. The Shanghai Circuit station is very close to the main entrance and ticket pickup area, and is the most convenient, not to mention cost effective, way of getting to the track. You can drive or take a Didi (the Chinese Uber), but with the crazy traffic of the weekend, the time commitment is about the same. Plus, the metro only costs about a $1.

We did hear from some people who took a Didi to the track on the actual race day, when the drop off area for taxis was far, far away from the entrance, requiring about a 20 minute walk to get to the gates. Be smart, take the metro.

The F1 Race Weekend

The standard ticket package is for three days: Friday is practice, Saturday is practice and qualifying, and Sunday is the official race.

Our weekend got off to an auspicious start. We had planned to meet part of the Shenzhen group on Friday afternoon to watch one of the practice sessions. However, domestic Chinese air travel reared its evil head. Thursday night brought epic rain showers to the Shenzhen area, which caused a ripple effect of delays and cancellations for air travel on Friday.

Our planned early afternoon meeting at the Shanghai Circuit was cancelled, as our friends were delayed about four hours. The rest of the group had a harrowing day as well, as they scrambled to change flights and the cancellations stacked up. At one point, people were contemplating taking an overnight, 10-hour train ride, or driving the 16 hours to Shanghai.

Thankfully, everyone managed to make it to Shanghai by late, late Friday night, but it wasn’t easy. Two of the guys flying together from Shenzhen had their flight cancelled and all other options were fully booked. They eventually rebooked for an evening flight, but out of Hong Kong, not Shenzhen. No one got to attend the Friday session, but at least everyone made it to Shanghai eventually.

The Race Weekend

With our plans for Friday washed out, we finally all met up on Saturday morning at the Shanghai Circuit. The lines were short for ticket pickup, so within a few minutes, we had our official F1 race tickets for the weekend.

The schedule for the weekend was busier than you might expect. In addition to the main attraction of F1, there was a F4 race and a Porsche GT race, so we got to see quite a bit of racing.

As we discovered, most of the F1 ticket holders only come for qualifying and the actual race, which left the grandstands blissfully empty most of the day on Saturday. Our group happily watched every minute of racing available. Plus, Julie was hoping to see a crash (spoiler alert: she didn’t).

The grounds are quite large around the track, with a big merchandise and sponsor section. The official F1 merchandise tent was packed with fans all weekend. I ended up passing on any purchases, since all of the official merchandise was insanely pricey, almost $50 for a Red Bull team hat. Thanks, but no thanks.

There was also food for purchase at the track, though you were also allowed to bring in your own food and drink, which was surprising. What wasn’t surprising is that the food options were not great. We ate lunch one day at the food court area outside the main grandstand, and had lukewarm Burger King Whoppers and something dubbed “Chicken Fries”, which might be the single saddest food item I’ve eaten in years.

There were a few outlets of Pizza Hut dotted around the concession areas as well, which we now know is the best meal option available. Of course, a 10″ pan pizza ran almost $20, but beggars can’t be choosers at an event like this.

The F1 Chinese Grand Prix

The actual race on Sunday afternoon was exhilarating, and with the long straight in front of us, we saw the cars at their fastest speed at any track in the world. The cars hit their max speed of around 340 kph (210 mph) before slamming on the brakes for the hairpin turn. The speed is so extreme that with each car approaching the turn, they appeared to be going far too fast to make the corner.

Unfortunately for Julie, no one misjudged this year and the corner was without major incidents. But we did manage to cheer through many daring, exciting passes just before the hairpin curve, with sparks flying from the underside of the F1 cars under extreme braking.

There were a few large screens positioned near Grandstand K so we could keep track of the rest of the race that we couldn’t see. Even better was the F1 app, where we could easily follow all of the live leaderboard action, and listen to the commentary and the radio communications from the drivers. We followed lap times, could see the gap between cars, and see who was gaining on whom.

The Chinese Grand Prix Recap

Our first live experience with F1 and we’re both officially hooked. We’ve binged the Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive about the 2017-18 season, which is a fantastic primer if you’re interested in the people behind the sport. And it was also such fun to be at an event with friends who are lifelong fans and know everything about the sport.

The F1 Chinese Grand Prix was worth the price of admission, even for newbies like us. Was the event run perfectly? Of course not. There were super inefficient security lines outside each entrance which made us late for the Porsche GT event on Sunday and queues for everything from coffee stands to merchandise stores were insane during the races.

I will give credit to the race organizers for being very efficient with clearing the grounds after the race, when about 100,000 people made their way to the same subway station. They organized holding areas and released only one at a time so that the entrance was not a mass of people pushing and shoving their way through the gates. Dealing with large crowds is kind of an important skill in China and we’re happy to see that the race was no exception.

Would you believe that we’re already planning to attend one, maybe two, additional races this season? We have our eye on tickets for the Singapore race and I might fly to Austin, Texas for another. F1, you officially have two new fans.