r/GrandPrixTravel

So I'm Malaysian and attended all 3 days of the race. I'm an average F1 fan who happened to stumble onto an opportunity to attend a F1 race in his own country. I bought k1 grandstand, relied solely on public transport to get to the circuit. And here was my experience.

I'll start with the good things. On track action was phenomenal, once the race got going, the overtaking, the sound of the engines, the atmosphere it was amazing to experience that in person. The people, so obviously there were gonna be a lot of locals and foreigners attending and I talked to a few of them and everyone was very friendly. Overall, it was what I come to expect from a F1 race.

Then I will share the bad things, I am sure everyone has already seen the reels and news about the terrible crowd management from day 1 of the event. I want to come out say, I hope everyone knows that BIC was in charge of everything and didn't want the help of SIC. Now I am not blaming any party, I truly believe that both parties were at fault, 1 underestimating the size of the crowd, Bahrain peak attendance on race day is 35k people (a quick Google search on Bahrain average attendance) Vs Sepang already reaching 30k on day 1 (low estimates I found online) and SIC not being proactive enough. However, I must say thank you to SIC, Rapid KL, Prasanna, JPJ, the local authorities, for stepping up on day 2 and day 3.

On day 1, the shuttles that dropped you off at the circuit from the KLIA airport, had no priority lane, no road closure, barely any support and even dropped you off on the side of the road and you had get onto an internal shuttle where there no signs, no designated pick up zone or anything. On day 2 and day 3, all that changed, JPJ closed down the road leading to circuit prioritising the shuttles over individual vehicles with parking passes, this improved getting to the circuit massively. Once you reached the circuit there was now a designated staging area for people to queue and designated pick up zones for people to get onto the internal shuttle with ease.

Leaving the circuit has also massively improved, day 1 chaos, all the busses lined up on the side of the road, nobody were queuing up, the people in charge gave up enforcing the queus, utter and complete disaster. Day 2 and 3, the effort from SIC, Rapid KL, Prasanna and the local authorities cannot be ignored, there were metal barriers, designated queus for certain routes, water was passed out by the SIC CEO. I know queues for the shuttles were still long but atleast it was controlled and the mood was significantly better, people actually yelled at the bus drivers when they arrived but didn't opened the doors, well maybe because everyone was crowding around the bus on the highway?? Day 2 and 3, people cheered when the bus showed, that must have been an amazing feeling for everyone involved.

The water situation, I don't know if everyone knew this but water bottles were allowed to be brought in just not the plastic, easy to litter/leave everywhere ones. I had a Tupperware water bottle and made it in just fine. They even made emergency repairs to the K1 water fountain and improved the water pressure so people could fill up faster. I didn't go to the mall area or the fan zone area because I came here to watch cars go vroom, not fanboy over the drivers, so I can't really say much about the mall, main grand stand area queues for water but I heard it was bad.

The vendors, simply put, not enough vendors, the wait time for food was around 1-2 hours for me, I just stuck in snacks on day 2 and 3 onwards, the price was way too expensive for me as a local anyways.

That was my experience of the Malaysia Grand Prix, as a local, I will remember the exciting atmosphere, the sound of the engines, the amazing effort put in by everyone to improve the situation. That's just how us Malaysians roll, we fumble, we mess up but we always get back up and move forward.

Just sharing my experience and respecting the effort of everyone from SIC, Rapid KL, Prasanna, JPJ, and the local authorities for stepping in. If you have a problem with people making an effort to improve, then make your own post.

Anger doesn’t really justify how I’m feeling at the moment.

5 hours in that RIDICULOUS line outside the track waiting for those busses. FIVE HOURS!!!

Multiple people around us fainted. Security and organizers were throwing water bottles at us like we were prisoners of fucking war, jammed in together like sardines.

This is absolutely unacceptable and I am genuinely considering not going to the race tomorrow. I would have never thought I’d ever even contemplate not going to a race I have tickets to, but leaving the track is THAT bad

Keep Sepang off the calendar. They had their chance and hey have failed, miserably.

As everyone is already very well aware the co-ordination of the exit from the circuit was dreadful - we left the track around lap 40 from the main grand stand and got to the bus area quite quickly and boarded the bus in somewhat decent time, but then we sat on the bus for 2.5 hours to get to long term car park - as the bus was forced to turn left exiting the circuit rather than be guided by staff to allow it to turn right. That manouver alone took us over 90 mins to go down to the roundabout only to do a u-turn and come back past the circuit where we drove out.

Once at the long term car park they have this grab collection area that is utterly useless and they have people queuing for a grab with almost no cars coming at all. Grab staff ask you to use a pin code on the grab app and join the queue, but then the staff suggest to people to cancel it and try to book a separate ride and the just leave the queue (thus defeating the whole point of the queue)

I was very lucky to get a grab and am going to arrive at my hotel approx 11:30pm, after leaving the circuit before the race was complete at about 5:45pm.

Having experienced quite a few Grand Prix this is by far the worse planning and execution I have ever seen, and I feel so terrible for the thousands of people still stuck at the circuit, especially those with children or who are elderly.

Good luck to everyone getting home tonight - sincerely a very pissed off F1 fan.

Because we know we cannot bank on the organizers to remotely care about people getting sick and ill anymore - any updates on the situation from queues to water to shuttle is much appreciated to everyone heading in and out of there.

Read another thread that water is allowed at K1.

Before they pull further stunts, any updates welcomed 🙏

Everyone probably knows the gist already of how badly organized the whole weekend was. None the less, it is absolutely awful, having to pay these insane prices for a race weekend and simultanously having to leave any on-track action early, just to be able to guarantee a trip back on time. And we are not talking about the usual Grand Prix-experience à la "if we finish the race we might be back an hour late", but much rather a difference of being back at your hotel by 7pm versus by midnight.

I would like to say the crowd management has gotten better with each day, but even the best day of the weekend had much poorer handling than any other event on the F1 calendar. As someone who has been to multiple Grand Prixs, huge concerts and several festivals, I can safely say that this has been the worst event I have ever attended in regards to coordination, crowd-control, basic security and accessibilty. Which is a damn shame, because the layout of the track is amazing, there was some great on track action and the vibe within the grandstands was nothing short of incredible throughout the weekend. Personally, I would love to have Sepang back on the official calendar, but not in its' current state.

Let it be known, that I also do not care about pointing fingers. People have been spreading the word that it was Bahrains fault, as they themselves wanted full control over the race weekend. But I do not care who was in charge or who was at fault. Formula One is considered the pinncale of motorsport. Fans pay ridicolous amounts of money to attend race weekends. This should neither be the norm nor the exception. If a proper handling of an event of such scale can not be warranted on such short notice, then it should not be allowed to transpire at all. This is not just about comfort by the way. It was hours upon hours in chaotic, slow moving queues with no proper communication, on a dry parking lot without any shade or access to basic food or water. People got heatstrokes, fainted and the risk of a stampede was never zero. An utterly unacceptable state of affairs by all managing parties involved and a disgrace to an otherwise wonderful track.

As the title suggests, how did everyone go getting home or still getting back?

Ie what time you left, when you got back to kl sentirla etc!

We left 5 laps to go, caught bus to enstek and called grab which is arriving to KLCC in 10 mins

Hey all, I’m from the UK travelling around SE Asia, I’ve always been an F1 fan, I haven’t been to a F1 weekend before, but decided to go this weekend as I was in Malaysia.

As a sports fan I’ve been to events all over the world but have never experienced anything this horrifically organised - with queue times consistently outrageous and a lack of access to basic food and water. So my question is: is this queuing especially bad for a F1 weekend or is this normal for the F1?

It seems clear to me that Sepang was woefully under prepared and not fit to host this event for so many people, to the point that I think refunds should be issued to spectators who had the misfortune of choosing this event.

Post feedback, reviews, tip, photos and a quick note on your experience.

Where did you park or get to the circuit? How did you get your tickets?

[Join the r/grandprixtravel discord server](https://discord.gg/vGjUSpc856)

Even the ride home was a mess.
I booked a ride because the guidebook said that licensed operators were allowed to come to the circuit, but apparently my driver wasn’t allowed anywhere near it.
So I ended up just taking the shuttle anyway.
Goodbye, my 350 ringgit. 🥲
And the airport transfer I booked? Turns out the account was literally created last month. lol
what a joke.

Needless to say, I won’t be visiting Bahrain or Sepang again.

I will not go to race tomorrow (I mean Sunday)

Today's experience was horrific.

- Entering to Main grandstand took 1 hour.

- Only few free water station - most of them worked poorly.

- Waited for almost 1 hour to buy some coffee but gave up.

- Queues for foods were worse.

- no foods, no waters nor free water station neither.

- Queues for buses were literally one of the most horrible and terrible things in my life.

- I saw some people fainted. Literally NO management in most Queue lines so people tried to get help by shouting like 'Medic!' and 'We need medical help here!'

- Also some people had broken into the queue. Neither NO management.

I know some people think this decision is ridiculous... but after experiencing these things for 2 days, I decided -1 from race tomorrow. For my health and travel experience in Malaysia with my family members. I hope you guys will enjoy race tomorrow and GET BETTER EXPERIENCE AND MANAGEMENT THAN TODAY.