“This isn’t Formula 1 Fyre Fest,” Alexandra Zigrang assures by fun.
Factual a year in, her Barcelona-based trackside run firm, Off to the Races, has been removed from a failure. Not just like the depraved tune competition that promised luxurious thousand-dollar villas simplest to raise emergency tents and cheese sandwiches as an alternate. The firm presents feminine travelers what it describes as a “premium weekend the place the glide approach has been engineered for a seamless trip,” with every thing from VIP hospitality tickets to a glam room within the plush hotel, total with makeup artists and hair stylists. If that doesn’t sound love what you imagine an F1 glide weekend outing to be, that’s the point; Off to the Races creates a convey for Formula 1’s rising viewers of females by catering to their model of fandom — and by turning their off-tune trip into a “Dawdle + Leisure” unfold.
It’s love a motor oil-stained bachelorette occasion pairing on-tune walk with Michelin superstar meals.
Photo by: Gael Strachan
Off to the Races has flown alive to feminine fans in from 5 worldwide locations, with most hailing from the States, boasting a demographic accomplish-up that nearly suits Formula 1’s practical stylish feminine fan: 30-something and American, love Sara Lett, a 38-year-aged tech marketer from Atlanta who joined Off to the Races in June for the Spanish Huge Prix.
Lett began watching “Drive to Survive” in 2023 at a coworker’s insistence. Regardless of witnessing the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” twice while rising up in Indianapolis, she never developed the gearhead itch. Then she heard the Netflix sequence’ opening line: “I’m Daniel Ricciardo, and I’m a automobile mechanic.”
“I became love, ‘supplied!’” Lett remembers, a smile spreading all over each and every cheeks.
Once she heard news of Ricciardo’s future seat uncertainty and Lewis Hamilton’s switch from Mercedes to Ferrari, Lett knew she desired to search each and every drivers race previous at 200 miles per hour, leaving bits of rubber of their wake as a tangible lasting impression.
Lett deemed her dream of ending up trackside “daunting” in some unspecified time in the future of her initial designate analysis rabbit hole, but then she discovered Off to the Races while scrolling on Instagram — the place the firm meets terminally online feminine racing fans on their have turf.
Vacation location Formula 1
Zigrang chooses destinations in accordance with four criteria: funds, logistics, cultural experiences, and, of direction, colossal food. Belgium’s legendary Spa tune poses logistical complications, tucked within the countryside 90 miles from Brussels, and Monaco won’t be on Off to the Speed’s calendar till Zigrang “for my half owns a yacht.”
When she first toyed with the postulate of using her previous VIP management trip within the world art world to birth a Formula 1 run planning enterprise, Zigrang discovered that the game’s run suppliers were nearly all UK-based and organized by males.
“They with out a doubt lacked a charming point of test out. Logistically, they bought you there, to have a hotel and to have a designate and most most likely transportation, but it with out a doubt wasn’t chic. Formula 1, although it is soiled and fleet and crazy, it’s also with out a doubt sexy,” Zigrang said. “I conception of the total issues I fetch to create when I run: eat with out a doubt smartly, with out a doubt web to clutch the metropolis, along with having that colossal trip on the tune.”
For instance: Formula 1 presents designate packages by F1 Experiences with alternatives starting from a grandstand designate, hotel and transportation bundle to three-day VIP storage passes. On the upcoming Mexican Huge Prix, the latter carries a $25,000 price designate with out accommodation. On the 2025 British Huge Prix, an accommodation, transportation and grandstand designate kit begins at spirited below $3,500 for 3 nights.
The Mexican Huge Prix marked the closing Off to the Races outing of the 2024 F1 season, following visits to the Spanish and Dutch Grands Prix earlier this year. The voyage to Mexico’s capital metropolis integrated a four-night care for at a local hotel and a 3-day grandstand walk with guarantees of podium ceremony views — for roughly €4,000 per person. Aúna, a Food and Dawdle Most attention-grabbing New Mexican Restaurant, and Contramar, a Michelin Recordsdata eatery, are booked a year in attain for put up-tune day meals. Morning yoga and a tour of the Museo Frida Kahlo offer a moment of accumulated earlier than the Formula 1 engines technique to lifestyles, and a swiftly of Mercedes sprinter vans-turned-occasion buses convey the neighborhood to and from the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.
For 2025, Miami, Barcelona, and Zandvoort already retain a location on Off to the Races’ run itinerary, and Zigrang hopes to be capable to add Australia, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore within the future. Subsequent season, a “race sequence,” offering three- to four-day itineraries between fetch double-headers, is on the horizon. The 2025 Spanish Huge Prix kit, which involves a the same itinerary plus trackside VIP hospitality, prices €5,000 per person — even supposing travelers half a room.
But sharing a room isn’t a dealbreaker. And for spirited a dinky bit extra money, the resulting outing enables fans love Lett in on the game’s simplest-kept secret: how it feels to be a trackside VIP for a day. “We’re in hospitality, there is transportation to and from, then a tour of the Sagrada Familia and a bop around to the fan zone,” Lett gushed. “Your whole technique to a Michelin superstar dinner and a welcome occasion with cool influencers. It spirited so came about that night that Red Bull became on the the same rooftop.”
Regardless of brushing shoulders with group sponsors and cyber web celebrities, Lett restful can’t fairly shake basically the most thrilling half of all of it: listening to the rumble of 20 engines turning over.
“You literally web goosebumps,” Lett said. “Like, oh my gosh, right here’s genuine. This goes on, and I’m listening to it. You’re about to search it in genuine lifestyles. That is just not any longer spirited on my TV anymore.”
“Net you even know what DRS approach?”
Between 2017 and 2022, feminine fandom for F1 elevated by 8 p.c, per Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali. Swelling north of 40 p.c of the game’s whole viewers, feminine fans did what they devise simplest: carved out an online neighborhood to bond by TikTok edits, fan-made merchandise, and the switch of nonjudgmental glide files. But that wasn’t mirrored within the are dwelling audiences sweeping the grandstands on the races.
“A form of the females that were in attendance were there with a partner or they were with household contributors,” Zigrang said. “I felt that became so disconnected from what I became seeing online, the place younger females, especially on social media, were pushing the game forward in attention-grabbing ideas. You weren’t seeing that translate into attendance within the the same approach that you simply had seen males organize themselves historically.”
And while designate prices and logistics deter feminine fans from attending grands prix, exclusivity and safety considerations direct their have drawbacks as smartly. On the 2022 Austrian and Dutch Grands Prix, feminine fans reported being harassed within the grandstands. The FIA raised the rep 22 situation with circuit promoters and security.
Furthermore, females who test out the game in most cases discuss of having to interpret their passion while fielding questions love “Net you even know what DRS approach?” from incredulous male F1 fans. With simplest 20 driver names to learn and an abundance of online wreck packages, entry into the “upper echelon of motorsport” looks low stakes. On the opposite hand, all americans from casual feminine spectators to self-proclaimed fangirls has been met with backlash.
Photo by: Onno Zonneveld
Off to the Races presents an inclusive solution. “These form of females don’t, day-to-day, maintain other folks to chat over with about this fandom with,” Zigrang said. And approach the Monday after glide day, when the wining and dining has concluded and the closing automobile has crossed the checkered flag, Off to the Races’ attendees wing aid to their respective corners of the globe — and the friendships solid from the fable all-feminine getaway won’t stop.
“Now we maintain an Instagram chat that is ongoing one one more day, if no longer each and each day, the place we’re chatting about Formula 1,” Lett said.
“Other folks are spirited inflamed with a realizing to head just like the game that they esteem and maintain a neighborhood to create it with,” Zigrang said. “For a form of females, they’re love, ‘I’d maintain never performed this on my have.’”
