Well, there's that and the fact that I'd be spending more money to go to Austin for 3 days than I did to spend 2 weeks in New York. If F1 wants to put more butts in the stands, maybe they should start selling their tickets less than $300 for a single bleacher seat. And those are the mediocre seats. It's a lot more if you want the good seats: $500 for T12, $550-675 for T1 or T15, and $675-1200 for Main Grandstands. So even assuming you get the $170 general admission, that doesn't account for the $200 (F**CKING 200?!?!) parking fee, ridiculous expensive hotels, expensive travel to/from track (rent a car? $200 parking fee? expensive taxi for three round trip rides?).

It's a baller's event and "regular" people have a hard time justifying the costs.

To be honest, it has less to do with the sound, but the sound certainly doesn't help me justify going to Texas this fall.

I swore I was going to the US F1 when they came and flaked, and now I'm kicking myself, because the awesome sounding engines are gone, and thetre's no way I'm spending a small fortune to go see F1 now!

Now, maybe it's like the old Coke scare, when they changed the formula to "new coke" or something, and everyone swarmed to buy up the last original cokes available, because if they bring back awesome sounding, high revving engines next year, I'd move heaven and earth to go to the US F1 GP.

I was considering going to see the F1 race in Texas this year but didn't know it will cost that much. Now I'm not so sure about going.

This. If people don't like the sound now, they're not going to like the same sound marginally louder. No fart can exhaust is going to make these engines sounds anything like a V-10 at 19,000 RPM.

Transportation might not be that much of an issue if the hotel has a compleimentery shuttle and is within range of the track. My girlfriend is one of the assistant general managers for a local Hyatt, so we get extremely good prices on Hyatt properties anywhere in the world. For us, the closest Hyatt was something like 20 miles away, but it would have been 1/4 the cost of staying closer (which were all mostly booked already anyway).

But in general, I was budgeting around $2000 for the trip for two people. Between airfare, hotel, transport, race tickets, souvenirs, it's just a hell of a lot of money to spend on a weekend.

I just got back from an east coast trip spanning 4 nights in NY, followed by NH, Maine, and finally Boston. The entire trip for two was less than $2500, including plane tickets, train tickets, Broadway show tickets, a Yankees game with good seats, Yankee and Fenway stadium tours, handfuls of shirts and mugs, museums and attractions, plenty of good eating, and fabulous hotel rooms. That's what I call value for money.

The ticket prices to the USGP aren't the expensive part. For the inaugural race at COTA, I purchased tickets at one of the better corners. I got them the day they went on sale for like $300/each. I ended up selling them because we couldn't justify the cost for everything else. I think we calculated it being a $3k+ weekend. For that price we decided we'd rather spend a little more and go see a F1 race in Europe or Japan.

Back in 2006 our family of 5 went to F1 at Indy. I remember parking being $50/day a mile away from the circuit.

The financial problem with these events, IMHO, isn't really the ticket prices it's everything else that gets jacked up as well.

Is F1 an industry ripe for disruption?

That's worth a read:

http://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/w...for-disruption

I'm saving a little at a time over the next 24 months to go to Monaco in 2016. My favorite circuit!

$200 to park? That's highway robbery and they should be reported for that crap. If that isn't fleecing, I don't know what is. Let's see......Nascar in Texas the same weekend....check......parking....usually free....check.

Soooooo.......Monaco...


My personal favorite race of the year. What do you guys think? Who's gonna take it this year? I know Lewis has been fast but this is a slow circuit, I'm betting on Nico or maybe even Ricciardo. Either way, I'll DEFINITELY be waking up early this Sunday...

Favorite race of the year?! Have you watched a Monaco GP lately?
If it's dry, absolute snooze fest. If it's wet, ridiculous (yet entertaining) mayhem.

The fun part is pretty much everything but the race (VIPs, demos, celebs, hotties on yachts).

I want to love Monaco so much, but every year it's the same procession of cars in a line with very little movement. Last year was exciting, mostly because Perez was driving like a crazed maniac and Sutil was actually trying to move up the field. Maldonodo did what he does best and had a massive crash, along with Massa and Grojean, who crashed like 5 or 6 times between them.

I'll definitely watch it, but I'm going to be more excited for the crashes and the spectacle than the actual racing. A Mercedes is going to win, probably Lewis, and the rest of the midfield (including Ferrari :( ) will be fighting for any points they can get without crashing these torque monsters.

Well, okay...I'll have to admit that the race isn't what makes Monaco my favorite GP...it's the event as a whole.

I would put my money on: Rosberg, Riccardo, Alonso, or either Force India drivers.

Monacco is definitely not my favorite race. I would gladly watch the Coca Cola 600 if they both came on at the same time.

The Indy 500 trumps them both. ;)

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