Circuit of Spa-Francorchamps — Attraction in Stavelot

I'll preface this with this was my first time at a Formula 1 race, and that this review pertains to the 2025 Spa/Belgium GP.

The circuit itself was absolutely incredible, and watching the races was a once-in-a-lifetime experience at belgiums last permanent spot on the F1 calendar.

The organization of everything at the race was incredibly poor.

We took the shuttle from Verviers-Centraal which inexplicably drops you off ~4KM from the circuit, requiring a huge amount of walking to get to the track every day.

By my health apps count, we are on pace to do around 45KM of walking over 1 weekend.

The shuttles are extremely crowded, and it seems that organizers aim to cram as many people as possible onto shuttles, leading to people slipping into each other when the bus makes sharp turns/hard brakes.

Once you get to the circuit, it doesn't get much better, as it seems security is not easily able to manage large crowds, leading to large delays getting from Fanzone to Seats. They also seem to mostly speak French and don't seem to have folks speaking all 3 official languages of Belgium.

People taking your seats, even in areas with reserved seating, seems frequent and we had to ask people to move multiple times. The attitude of stewards seems to be very laissez-faire towards ensuring people in grandstands have tickets to be there, and are in their assigned seats.

Given that, I would highly recommend booking unassigned seating (silver or bronze for F1), as it's cheaper, and perhaps not too different an experience.

Food is OK, but extremely expensive. We paid €9.60 for 2 500ml bottles of sparkling water at the circuit.

Lines for toilets are also long between events, and there's seemingly an insufficient quantity of those and water refilling stations. The same can be said for many of the on-circuit activities: do not expect to be able to do any of those without sacrificing time watching F1/2/3 events

I believe the circuit has had F1 Races running for ~100 years, so I can truly not fathom the incompetence displayed in the organization of this race and the surrounding events.

Overall, while I thoroughly enjoyed the F1 events on circuit, the organization of everything made the experience of getting to and from those...

WARNING: Do NOT buy tickets for areas of the track where you have to use the yellow parking zones (especially E25)!

Despite the shuttle buses, you still have to walk about 2-3 km to reach the La Source entrance; depending on which grandstand you want to go to, you have to cover the same distance again (partly uphill in brutal heat, such as during the 2025 Formula 1 sprint race).

That's bad enough, but leaving after the race is even WORSE.

It easily takes an hour to leave the track, as all spectators are squeezed through exits that are far too narrow (but not just in ONE direction, as is the case at concerts or football games for example; no, you also have hundreds of people coming towards you who are on their way to an exit in another area of the track, which makes the already far too narrow paths even narrower).

The shuttle buses after the race were nowhere to be seen; there was only one completely overcrowded bus, which left immediately.

We waited in vain for about half an hour before walking back to the parking lots (~4 km away). There is no communication whatsoever about whether, when, and how many shuttle buses are coming; we then saw two or three buses coming towards us, but they would not have been enough to transport hundreds of visitors anyway

To avoid this, I checked the operator's website in advance (and also wrote to customer service), but the information there is cryptic and, at best, incomplete; the stewards along the track knew absolutely NOTHING and some of them only spoke broken English.

Long story short: This track will never see us again.

At least then I will never have to endure that nutcase of a “DJ” who jumped around like a madman and kept babbling over annoying music next to the big screen in Eau...

Saying DISASTER is not enough strong word to describe organization of this event. First of all surprises was paying the parking around the circle Spa, which hasn't been written anywhere when buying race tickets. 20€ per day, and no selection available, so we got parking yellow E25, which is about 4 kilometers from the circuit, which we should have been travel with organised buses, but there was a chaos in that transport organisation. On Friday we waited about 2 hours to catch the bus to the E25 area, on Saturday all was blocked and we couldn't take the bus, so we were walking that 4 kilometers plus 4 kilometers from the Silver 2 tribine to the place where the bus should collect passengers. Traffic police and organisation was in total chaos, they didn't know what they were doing. Parkings were full od mud and destroyed by the cars, no one cared about that. At the track, paying is in some "coins", so you need to pay in € to their special cards, and pay only with that their card; so for 50€ you get 30 coins, and when paying for example coke, it's 2.70 coins, but actually it's 4.50€, which is very confusing and seems like cheap but actually it isn't. Other Europe ciruits where F1 is organised is way much better and more correct. Many other bad things like exit after the event, bad organisation also there, people were blocked in front of gates for an hour or more. Tickets must be printed instad of using QR codes on cell phones, etc etc. Never again to Spa in my life, and would suggest no one...