Madrid F1 Weekend: What to Do Between Sessions

You’ve got the three-day pass for the Madrid F1 weekend, a hotel in the centre and the metro already figured out. And the track doesn’t wake up until well past midday. The Madrid Grand Prix — 11 to 13 September, at the Madring next to IFEMA — fills your afternoons, not your mornings. The nights, on top of that, begin exactly when the circuit empties.

I’ve been crossing Madrid for twelve years, and this is an honest plan for what to do in Madrid during the F1 weekend, besides the race itself: your free mornings, how to get to the circuit and back, and where to watch the session on the days you’re not in a grandstand. If it’s also your first time in the city, I keep a map of the places I actually send people to.

Your mornings are free — the track isn’t awake yet

The gates open at 08:00, but the first car doesn’t roll until 13:30 on Friday and 12:30 on Saturday; on Sunday the race starts at 15:00. The full timetable is in the questions at the end. Add it up: three whole mornings of Madrid to yourself — and a spare afternoon or two, if you decide to skip a practice session.

Three mornings is more Madrid than most weekends give you. If the plan below runs short, there is more to do in Madrid than fits around a race.

Start the way the city starts: a slow breakfast — coffee and toast with grated tomato, salt and olive oil, or a proper chocolate con churros. If art is your thing, use the morning for one of the three big museums: the Prado, the Reina Sofía or the Thyssen-Bornemisza. Just one. The classic trap is trying to complete the whole Art Triangle and stumbling out at three in the afternoon, dizzy, having taken in nothing. Two hours are enough to understand one museum properly — not to run through three.

Or walk the Madrid de los Austrias early, when Plaza Mayor still belongs to the delivery crews and the streets around Plaza de la Villa show you the centuries with nobody standing in front of them. Maybe you’ve been wondering whether the Royal Palace is worth it. Honestly: if you’ve seen Versailles or Schönbrunn, the interior will taste like more of the same. If you haven’t, go in — two hours, and you come out understanding why the Philippines are named after Philip II.

If you’d rather have someone tell you the story — and have the morning built around what you actually came for — come out on the Hidden Madrid Bike Tour: three hours through the old town, daily at 10:00 and 15:00, eight people maximum, from €47. Book at least 24 hours ahead. The 10:00 ride ends at 13:00: it fits Sunday, and Thursday or Monday if you’re in town either side of the weekend. Friday is tight — FP1 starts at 13:30 — and Saturday doesn’t work at all, with FP3 at 12:30 on the other side of the city. If Saturday is your only free morning, come on Friday or Sunday instead.

And the 15:00 departure? Time to be honest: it overlaps the sessions on all three days. But if you’re not planning to attend every one — and plenty of people skip a practice — it’s the best way I know to understand how the city fits together: three hours through the neighbourhoods of the old town.

Getting to the Madring — and back

The circuit sits on the IFEMA fairgrounds, northeast of the city, and you can’t drive to it: the organisers say there will be no general public parking in the area, and their mobility plan is built around more than 80% of spectators arriving by public transport. With 100,000-plus people a day, that isn’t a suggestion.

From the centre the metro is the simple answer: Line 8 to Feria de Madrid. You pick it up at Nuevos Ministerios, and it’s the same line that runs out to the airport — but Feria de Madrid is an ordinary Zone A station, so the airport supplement doesn’t apply here. Which ticket or pass is actually worth buying depends on how many days you’re in town: here is what each Metro ticket costs. Line 4 works too if you don’t mind a walk — Mar de Cristal or San Lorenzo, about fifteen minutes on foot.

The train is where most guides get it wrong. Cercanías C-1 does stop at Valdebebas, next to the north fan zone, but the line has been cut back to a Chamartín–Airport T4 shuttle: from Atocha, Recoletos or Nuevos Ministerios you change at Chamartín first. It isn’t a straight run from the centre. If you’re arriving from Barajas on the same trip, I’ve compared every route in from Barajas, current fares included.

There are official shuttle buses as well, from Plaza de Castilla, Avenida de América, Canillejas and the Metropolitano stadium — and the Metropolitano is where the one official car park is, if you’re driving in from outside Madrid. Book that ahead.

Evenings: Madrid starts late — that’s good news

Between 18:00 and 19:00 the track goes quiet and the Madring empties. In most cities that would mean the day is over. In Madrid it means the day is starting: in mid-September it’s still summer here, and at 21:00 nobody is thinking about a jacket.

Dinner here starts from 21:00, and nobody will look at you twice if you sit down at 22:00. Use the gap between the circuit and dinner the way the city does: a terrace — September is one of the best months of the year to be sitting in a Madrid street —, a caña, and then tapas, which have their own logic and deserve a chapter of their own.

If you want an evening plan that doesn’t depend on language, an hour in a good flamenco tablao solves it: Madrid didn’t invent flamenco, but it concentrates many of the country’s best performers, working small rooms almost every night.

And if you skip the circuit one day and still want to watch the session? You don’t need a theme bar: look for the kind of place that already has the screen on — the classic cervecerías of the centre, neighbourhood bars with the TV at the back. On Sunday, arrive early: you won’t be the only one with the idea.

If you have Thursday or Monday

The three-day pass is intense: city mornings, circuit afternoons, long nights. If you can stretch the trip to Thursday 10 or Monday 14, that extra day is where the itinerary breathes. If you do, I’ve written out the three unhurried days I’d actually plan for a friend: Madrid in 3 Days.

It’s also the natural slot for the Hidden Madrid Bike Tour, with no session clock ticking — three hours through the old town at 10:00 or 15:00, eight people maximum, from €47, bikes included.

A practical note, not a promise: I’m one guide, with eight seats a day. If the GP weekend looks anything like what the hotels have already done, don’t leave it to the last week.

When the Madring switches off its lights on Sunday night, tens of thousands of visitors will go home with a race. The ones who used the mornings — and the nights — will go home with a race and a city. The difference doesn’t cost an extra ticket: it costs setting an alarm.

Madrid F1 weekend: frequently asked questions