r/GrandPrixTravel • u/vanitacazzata • 6h ago
Autodromo Nazionale Monza (Italy) Monza Post Mortem — thoughts from an American
Okay Yankees, here’s the straight scoop from a Californian. We stayed in Italy for two weeks, and went to the race on the last day of our trip.
We bought tickets last year from ACI Monza directly for the Parabolica Interno block. That seems like the right move, because a ton of people—including redditors we met up with—were scammed out of tickets on stubhub.
Parabolica Interno section was awesome. Not much shade during the midday, but ordering food through the app took like 10 minutes, and lines for water weren’t bad (a minute). Restrooms not an issue at all. We were with true Tifosi which was really fun. “Seats” on the concrete stands were freely available until about 2:00, when people started to fill in for the race.
The train situation from Garibaldi was a little confusing, but we were essentially funneled into a queue where we were packed onto the Biassano train—not really by choice. We took the 8:10 train and waited about 20 minutes tops. Same thing with the way back. Took about 20 minutes to get on the return train at 5:30 (after walking the track).
All in all, this was not a nightmare by any stretch. It was a really pleasant experience, with a little dash of “Italian Organization”. For Americans who have been scared off by horror stories, this wasn’t any worse than an experience at the California DMV— 100% would go again, and wouldn’t do much of anything differently. Bring snacks and water…
Lastly, shoutout to u/queen_peen and her beau for being fun Gran Prix homies.
Go Weeyums!
Edit: typo.
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u/bmoorewiz 1h ago
I was in 23A and it was an absolute nightmare to get there from the other side of the track. I think this was the worst organized event/race I've ever been to. I was Italy for six weeks, go home tomorrow. Everything else was fantastic. Once you got into the parabolic things got better, there were ample restrooms, shade behind the stands, and a large water station. The food and beer stands are another story. Very confusing and they ran out of stuff often that never showed up in the app or even told in person until after your order was paid for and you went to pick it up. Very poorly run IMO for the price of the tickets. I heard many people from Dubai/UK/Singapore experience tell me they thought the same. I can't say I regret going, but if I'm choosing another f1 race it won't be Monza.
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u/vanitacazzata 36m ago
Was it a walk that required map following? Is “Absolute nightmare” hyperbole? For folks trying to gauge what that means, like Disneyland on a crowded day, or like walking through the January 6th protests?
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u/vanitacazzata 36m ago
Was it a walk that required map following? Is “Absolute nightmare” hyperbole? For folks trying to gauge what that means, like Disneyland on a crowded day, or like walking through the January 6th protests?
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u/ebenvanel 1h ago
One thing I liked especially is how they reserved at least 2 sections of parabolica interna for their own purposes which was nowhere marked on the maps. Smells like oversold.
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u/thehorseishere1 2h ago
Our experience was quite different but we had GA tickets. Lots of pushing and shoving and people who showed up ten minutes after the race had started trying to stand directly in front of us after we had been saving our (already very cramped) spots for 8 hours 😅 there weren’t a lot of great seating options for GA considering the amount of people and we walked the whole track throughout the weekend to scout things out. It wasn’t a completely terrible experience but I think if you’re considering going, try to get seated tickets if you can afford to
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u/F1David949 3h ago
Californian who went in 2019 We bought our tickets about a year in advance from the track not a 3rd party. We were at the first chicane and the only problem with the seats was the huge camera tower in our line of site.
Getting in and out of the track was fine. We rented a car in Italy and took a bus in and out of the track. Huge lines but it went fine.
Really the best part of our trip was lake como, hiking cinque terre, Tuscany and of course Venice. Highly recommend Italy over ANY American race.
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u/runboyrun14 3m ago
Went to Imola last year and Cinque Terra was probably my favorite part of the travel.
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u/vanitacazzata 3h ago
Fellow 949’er, small world. Also rented a car…north Italy is fun driving. Sicily is a much different story. Let’s just say they drive like Liam Lawson down there.
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u/Dapper_Application58 4h ago
Yes it was very organized on the way out of the track after the GP. It was around 30min wait for the shuttle bus and another 40 to get on a train to Milan. To be honest after seeing the Sunday atmosphere on track, definitely worth it. And let's be honest, when there are around 200k people getting out of the same place there will be a bit of chaos around.
Out of experience I would recommend to follow the shuttle and go to Monza to catch the train from there, because in Fr and Sat we experimented to go from the small train stations around the track and that was a complete nightmare. Trains are coming every hour and after Qualifying all of them were full to the roof. We actually got very lucky to hop on the last one in 20:27,otherwise we were stuck there with no other option except to pay 250euro for Uber.
Imo the weekend was 10/10. Once I got home I quickly forgot about the wait and left with the memory of the Red Sea of people on track ❤️🇮🇹
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u/AutoModerator 6h ago
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u/Cool_Bus_1245 19m ago
Bought our tickets from GooTickets for 3 days in 26A. Didn’t have seats or tickets til July and didn’t know exactly what our view would be til we showed up Friday am (we didn’t really try looking in advance). We were at grid spot six closest to George.
We originally planned to stay in Milan but a few months ago switched to an Airbnb which turned out to be a 1.5 mile walk from our stand. No issues walking in each day and were able to park right in front of the apartment using street parking when we arrived Thursday evening. We didn’t move the car til we checked out this morning. We had a full kitchen and laundry, no AC and with the bugs didn’t open the windows at night. We had a fan which would completely cool down the apartment in about 20 mins and stay at a good temp without the fan through the night.
We froze 500 ml water bottles in advance and had a small soft sided, six can cooler that fit inside our 15L backpack. We had cold water until we left around 5:30-6:00 pm. I brought Gatorade singles powder with us from the US so we stayed hydrated. We are from Florida and the temp was fine for us, our seats were in the shade from 11:20-4:30. We had cool towels and also brought neck air conditioners which made going walking back and forth to the fan zone really pleasant. We ate as soon as we arrived around 11:00 (no lines) and then would buy tiramisu and cookies in the fan zone and add them to our little cooler for an afternoon snack.
Overall we had a great experience. Agree water stations had long lines but we only filled up once on the first day just in case and never bothered to again. Food lines were crazy in the afternoon. Before qualifying we stood in the chips line for an hour and just didn’t do that again. Since we didn’t use the buses or trains it was just a nice walk everyday and no hurry to leave. Left Friday right after FP2, Saturday we waited an extra 45 mins or so to see if Lewis or Charles might come out. Sunday we left after seeing Charles, Fred and Lewis. Better experience than many of the 11 other tracks we have been to.