Italy 2024, First Stop – IMOLA

Well, we finally made it to Italy! We were supposed to visit in March 2020, but we all know how that story went.

Humorously enough, when we were discussing where we wanted to go in Europe after what was supposed to be a work start for Ronald in Stockholm…we asked each other, “What’s the F1 schedule that week?” As it turned out, we discovered there would be racing at Imola May 17-19. That made things pretty easy to decide…we would travel from Stockholm to Bologna. We left Stockholm on Saturday morning, and had some significant flight delays…but we eventually made it to Bologna VERY late Saturday evening.

We were able to sleep and and have a bit of a slow start and get a little bit of our bearings before taking a train to Imola. Clearly, there were lots of other F1 fans along for this train ride. The train was full but not too crowded and it took about 20 something minutes to arrive. Pretty much everyone was walking from the train station to the track. It’s a fairly direct and short 25 minute walk directly to the circuit from the station. We enjoyed strolling with all the other F1 fans through town. Many restaurants and shops had tables, booths, etc. set up along the street outside of their businesses to serve the influx of potential customers. As we were passing Piazza Antonio Gramsci (somewhat adjacent/near the major square – Piazza Matteotti), I spied a man making pizza with an oven mounted on a little truck/trike. (Later googling I discovered it was ironpinsa and a little Ape Car three wheeled vehicle.) I could tell by the crust coloring/blistering that we needed to pause and get some. Oh man! My visual crust detection game is strong! How good this simple slice of pizza was blew our minds!! We got a second slice.

It took some time to get through the lines to get our tickets scanned and into the circuit. (If you’re interested in reading more about the history of the track check out this article – Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari.) Once inside, we made our way to the F1 Fanzone and we decided to grab a drink – Ronald got a beer and I was ecstatic to see that there was a spritz option. (After a week in Italy, it became obvious spritzes were EVERYWHERE…so of course this was an option.) Drinks were also very reasonably priced (reasonable for concessions at an event anyway) at €6 each. We hit up the official merchandise areas, and then we wandered to some of the nearer General Admission areas. We would have preferred to have seats, but we opted to do general admission as 1) in 2023 the race was canceled due to flooding and 2) you never know with air travel these days. Number 2 almost came into effect, too.

We walked between the famous Tamburello and Acque Minerali sections of the track…ultimately hanging out more near the grandstands by Acque Minerali because we could see some of the video coverage there. As the end of the race was nearing, we wandered again and found an area where we could essentially see the cars coming out of the DRS detection zone and traveling between turns 1 and 2…and we really were amazed at the perspective of being able to see in person just how fast the cars where going from right to left. As the race was in its closing laps, we actually made our way out of the circuit. We were hoping to be amongst the first back at the train station. Well, we were successful…but our timing just missed a departing train. Unfortunately, everyone caught up to us back at the station, too. The next train was running like 20 minutes late. So, the return trip was VERY crowded.

Getting back into Bologna, we grabbed in a sandwiches, chips, and drinks in a shop between the station and our hotel. We were DOG TIRED. The long travel day the day before plus all the walking and sun caught up with us. I think we covered around 9 miles that day. We basically showered, ate, and started to rewatch the race coverage and fell asleep straight away.