I have been to redbull ring

Since time immemorial

I started doing motorsports activities back in 2020 when I bought a wheel and pedals to play racing games on Playstation. It all started with Gran Turismo Sport – the real racing simulator. It might not be that real, but the skills it develops surely are. I had been doing it for a year before I started to follow F1 and started to experience ERS/DRS/tires/fuel management in F1 2020 game myself. Those games tried to mimic the real world so hard, so all of them have very precise models of iconic tracks. Among all the tracks available in those my favorites ones are Red Bull Ring, Interlagos, and Spa (which is slightly behind the other two).

GTS may bring me into motorsport, but it couldn’t be the only motorsport I’m doing. When I started go-karting, plenty of skills developed by playing GTS came into good use. The next logical step would be to experience a real car on the track. Red Bull Ring offers a comfortable and affordable experience of driving a car around the track. They have plenty of experiences on that Projekt Spielberg website with a variety of offerings: from a racing taxi (when you sit next to a driver doing a few fast laps around the track) to a real Formula 4 car experience. I chose the driver training consisting of driving training followed by the Lead and Follow section around the F1 track. All of those happen in their Porsche Cayman S.

Accomodation

Getting there isn’t the easiest task: they don’t have a train “Vienna–Redbull Ring”, so you’ll likely need to do some research on your own. I asked them via email about accommodation and getting there, and they gave me the advice to get to Knittlefield and take a taxi from there, so I did exactly that. At the time, I was staying in Budapest, so I took a train to Vienna, spent some time there (technically, Baden isn’t part of Vienna, but that doesn’t matter), and got a train directly to Knittlefield.

At the Knittlefield, I had a nice little hotel room for €60 for a night which proved to be a usual price for accommodation within Europe. Quite strange to have the same prices though given the quality differs, however it isn’t a problem. I failed to get to the right train in Vienna (one can guess why), so I was late for check-in, so I shared that information via the booking app, and they replied to me that they’ll leave an envelope with the key. Once I arrived I noticed that the only place still working is McDonald’s and I had the envelope taped to the entrance door with my name on it. Looks strange and silly, but still works.

The other story about accommodation happened the next morning: I needed to have a taxi to get to the track — I didn’t feel like walking more than for 1h. I tried every taxi app I had on my phone and no one of them worked, so I asked reception if they can help me figure out how to book a taxi. The woman there proposed to do it for me and asked what time I need a taxi to arrive. I tried to clarify how I know if this is my taxi without the app (yeah, zoomer tries to perform social tasks) and she said that it would have a taxi sign on it. Then I tried to clarify how I distinguish my taxi from others and she pointed out: “that’s easy — no one else here usually calls for one, so if it’s a taxi, it must be yours”.

Driving experience

Once I arrived at the track, it was nice to see some bits of a museum there: a famous exhaust system that feeds diffuser and plenty of other cars, so the necessary wait wasn’t a problem. When we started I realise that everyone but me was speaking German, the woman in my car didn’t speak English at all. So the instructor (or, perhaps, the instruktor) gave tons of information in German and translated the main part to English for me: wasn’t the nicest thing to do, but I already knew that Le Mans story for the key on the left and stuff.

We had a separate track for working out some things which are located between start-finish straight and turn 6, closer to T6. On the training track, there were small straights, a twisty corner section, and even a low grip (covered with water) section followed by a long sweeping corner right before straight. What a clever training area, they had even a low-grip circle to workout drift there.

There were 10 of us and 5 cars, so there were two people in the car at the time and we changed from time to time. The woman in my car wasn’t the most experienced driver and didn’t know English, however, she tried her best in both of them. Once training started, I was so aggressive right from the start — sim-racing and karting experience count when it comes to driving a real thing. I was so aggressive with driving that made that woman question herself if she wants to do it, but the instructor made her try and clarified that I’ll be in the car if she needs some assistance.

The main thing I haven’t mastered is drifting: I suck in it. Period. Don’t know if it’s a lack of control over the vehicle, or if you need separate skills for that, but I didn’t manage to do a perfect circle around there. Once we head onto the F1 race track, I felt much more comfortable: I tried to attack every corner, but the “lead and follow” format doesn’t allow you to do some representative laps, so it was slightly frustrating to me. Anyway, I managed to carry too much speed into turn 1 (went off), turn 4 (braked mid corner: you don’t want to end up in gravel trap), turn 9 (lovely runoff area there), and turn 10. The last two weren’t even a track limits violation a year ago! There’s the funny part: turn 2 isn’t really a turn for an F1 car, but on 200kmh+ speeds in that Cayman felt like a real corner: the track surface changes, and so does the balance of the car.

Surroundings

After the driving session and merch shop, I went for a walk around the race track: I wanted to have a photo with the Bull. One of the shortest tracks isn’t that short when you try to walk around it. While I was on my way to the Bull I managed to see the snow around which was funny because it was too hot to wear a jacket, so I was in T-Shirt only with snow next to me.

I suddenly found enter to the track next to turn 4, however it has a lock on it. The Bull is inside track’s territory, so I was wondering if I can go through that door. After quite expensive and high-precision research I found out that the lock wasn’t locked, so I entered the track with turn 4 on my right! I was even more excited given the amount of drama that happened at that very corner: Ham vs Albon, Ham vs Perez, Norris vs Perez, Russel vs Perez, and so on.

Then, passed corners 5 and 6 I was next to 7 and headed up to the Bull. What a view it was! I did offer a few friends a Bull’s dickpick, some of them actually enjoyed it, you can also ask for one — I still have it. What’s important, the bull is made from metal and became quite rusty over time. After that, I tried to escape the track because the monkey go home. I realized that even with a not properly locked door I still was on a part of the race track and the other exit was properly locked. I didn’t want to go back so I asked the gentlemen over there if they were okay with me climbing over the fence. They must not be Austrians as they didn’t mind at all.

After my break into track territory, I walked uphill to have a better look at a track (which I haven’t captured) and go home. It contained sheep and tons of beautiful landscapes that were ready for publishing right after you pressed the “shoot” button on your iPhone. When the time was close to the sunset, I decided to go and catch it instead of heading home: catching sunset is a pretty easy task to do — you go to it and you have it in your hands, right? After sunset, my t-shirt outfit proved that at that time of year you still need a jacket and stuff because the temperature difference is huge.

Conclusion

In the end, I liked the whole experience: the track is awesome, the accommodation is nice and you have beautiful landscapes over there. The driving experience was relatively cheap: around €300, but in total, I spend twice as much. I didn’t like the lack of competitiveness (no representative lap times and the whole training is mostly for beginners), however, it’s what it’s supposed to be. I believe that for any person enjoying driving it’s an experience worth trying, you even can chain it with sightseeing in Vienna, hiking, or anything else.