Writing about my visit to the Red Bull Ring has been long overdue – I was there on the May 1 long weekend, and yet we are in the middle of June… But at least, it could be a nice intro for the Austrian GP, I guess.

My worst track visiting habit was in play again: going by public transport. The good news is that there is a bus that leaves you practically at the entrance so at least you are free from walking by the side of the road.

The track has guided tours in German and in English (this already overdid some other circuits that I am not going to name), but unfortunately it does not involve going around the track itself. Maybe we could have bought some extra ticket, but the day we were there, there was an actual track day with cars, so it was out of the question.

I love track tours, at this point I have done quite a few of them, but let’s face it: they are quite similar in some sense. Doesn’t mean that I would get bored or that I’m not interested, but seeing race control for the first time and seeing one for the tenth time… Well, the thrill is just not the same. 

What the Red Bull Ring offers (that I haven’t seen at many tracks) is an open grandstand, where you can go up and just watch the cars. Even if it was only the beginning of May, the weather was perfect and honestly, the first corner view is something else. You can see a huge portion of the track with the backdrop of beautiful Austria! It looks pretty on the broadcast, but in real life, it is downright gorgeous. In some ways, it reminded me of Spa, because that was the other track where I saw nature blending in perfectly with motorsport. 

My mom was my companion and we spent one hour before and after the tour on the grandstand, and it was my absolute favorite part. They also have a nice cafe that we also tried for lemonade. The good thing is that even if you haven’t booked a guided tour, but you are in the vicinity, you can still just stop by, because their lobby is a museum in itself with some cars – formula and otherwise. I enjoyed the shop – they had nice pins for 4 EUR, which is a “good shop” indicator in my book. Their merch is also pretty nice, not completely into your face, and just nice graphics overall. Though I don’t know what I expected, Red Bull is basically an empire of marketing, of course they know what they are doing.

The tour of course was lovely, the guide used to work in F1 as a paddock builder (or I don’t know what the official name of his position is), so he shared some insider knowledge as well. After watching a short video about the history of the Red Bull Ring, we took the tunnel under the track and went to the other side. I love that tunnel, by the way, it is full of historic drivers that achieved something great at that track. And if you watch the 2020 season of Drive to Survive (maybe first episode) you can see a lot of it…

We went through the usual places: media center, hospitality, podium, race control, and of course I loved it all, but I loved it the most when we could just look out from above the pitlane and see what was going on there. No pitlane walk in this tour unfortunately (though I’m not sure if this was again because of the trackday that was happening in the meantime), but I liked the overall thing.

All in all, this guided tour in itself was all right (though I think participation should have been limited because there were way too many people in my opinion), but for me the grandstand experience made it special and the cars exhibited right in the lobby. It is an easily accessible track (in relation to other tracks, because a bus that goes in every 2 hours is not really the peak of accessibility).

I had a great time, I recommend visiting this track if you can, and after this experience the Austrian GP definitely made its way to my long-term bucket list. Have you ever been to the Red Bull Ring?