Why you can’t drive your car to Formula 1’s Dutch Grand Prix

It’s the Formula 1 race where cars are banned, at least for spectators.

Organizers of the Dutch Grand Prix pride themselves on requiring almost all of the 110,000 fans expected each day of this race weekend to arrive by public transport or bicycle.

Where other F1 races devote acres of space to spectators’ cars — the Miami Grand Prix offers 29 different parking lots around the Hard Rock Stadium — in the Netherlands, they converted a parking lot to fit more bikes.

People from outside the Netherlands “look at you as if you’re crazy” when they hear the race has storage space for 45,000 bikes, Dutch Grand Prix mobility manager Roy Hirs told The Associated Press. “But here they see what we are able to do.”

When the Dutch Grand Prix returned in 2021 after a 36-year absence, it was buoyed by passionate fan support for Max Verstappen, but organizers had a challenge to fit everyone in. There are two roads into town, a nearby national park, and not enough parking lots, Hirs said, so “transporting 110,000 people by car is never going to work.”

Years of planning created a system where only a small number of vehicles can enter the seaside town of Zandvoort during the race weekend.

Thousands of fans wearing orange to support Dutch champion Verstappen cycle in and leave their bikes at sites bearing the names of race tracks like Monza and Suzuka. There are buses from nearby campsites and trains running every five minutes from Amsterdam.

The few exemptions are mostly for circuit and team vehicles, fans with disabilities and local residents, Hirs said, adding the Grand Prix means Zandvoort’s 17,000 inhabitants find their roads are less crowded than on a typical summer weekend.

The Dutch Grand Prix is leaving the F1 calendar after next year but its legacy could live on.

Hirs said organizers of other F1 races and large-scale events have visited to see how its car-free approach to auto racing works.

“I think it starts with talking about it and then the adoption will come in the end,” he said, “but it takes time.”JAMES ELLINGWORTH, ZANDVOORT,  MDT/AP