Ladies first: The travel startup bringing together female F1 fans

“This isn’t Formula 1 Fyre Fest,” Alexandra Zigrang assures through a laugh.

Just a year in, her Barcelona-based trackside travel company, Off to the Races, has been far from a failure. Unlike the infamous music festival that promised luxury thousand-dollar villas only to deliver emergency tents and cheese sandwiches instead. The company offers female travelers what it describes as a “premium weekend where the race strategy has been engineered for a seamless experience,” with everything from VIP hospitality tickets to a glam room in the luxury hotel, complete with makeup artists and hair stylists. If that doesn’t sound like what you imagine an F1 race weekend trip to be, that’s the point; Off to the Races creates a space for Formula 1’s growing audience of women by catering to their version of fandom — and by turning their off-track experience into a “Travel + Leisure” spread.

It’s like a motor oil-stained bachelorette party pairing on-track action with Michelin star meals. 

Photo by: Gael Strachan

Off to the Races has flown eager female fans in from five countries, with most hailing from the States, boasting a demographic make-up that nearly matches Formula 1’s average modern female fan: 30-something and American, like Sara Lett, a 38-year-old tech marketer from Atlanta who joined Off to the Races in June for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Lett started watching “Drive to Survive” in 2023 at a coworker’s insistence. Despite witnessing the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” twice while growing up in Indianapolis, she never developed the gearhead itch. Then she heard the Netflix series’ opening line: “I’m Daniel Ricciardo, and I’m a car mechanic.”

“I was like, ‘sold!’” Lett recalls, a grin spreading across both cheeks. 

Once she heard news of Ricciardo’s future seat uncertainty and Lewis Hamilton’s switch from Mercedes to Ferrari, Lett knew she wanted to see both drivers sprint past at 200 miles per hour, leaving bits of rubber in their wake as a tangible lasting impact. 

Lett deemed her dream of ending up trackside “daunting” during her initial ticket research rabbit hole, but then she found Off to the Races while scrolling on Instagram — where the company meets terminally online female racing fans on their own turf. 

Destination Formula 1
Zigrang chooses destinations based on four criteria: budget, logistics, cultural experiences, and, of course, great food. Belgium’s legendary Spa track poses logistical problems, tucked in the countryside 90 miles from Brussels, and Monaco won’t be on Off to the Race’s calendar until Zigrang “personally owns a yacht.” 

When she first toyed with the idea of using her previous VIP management experience in the international art world to launch a Formula 1 travel planning business, Zigrang found that the sport’s travel providers were nearly all UK-based and organized by men. 

“They really lacked an interesting point of view. Logistically, they got you there, you got a hotel and you got a ticket and maybe transportation, but it wasn’t chic. Formula 1, even though it is dirty and fast and crazy, it’s also really sexy,” Zigrang said. “I thought about all the things I like to do when I travel: eat really well, really get to know the city, in addition to having that great experience at the track.” 

To illustrate: Formula 1 offers ticket packages through F1 Experiences with options ranging from a grandstand ticket, hotel and transportation bundle to three-day VIP garage passes. At the upcoming Mexican Grand Prix, the latter carries a $25,000 price tag without accommodation. At the 2025 British Grand Prix, an accommodation, transportation and grandstand ticket package starts at just under $3,500 for three nights.

The Mexican Grand Prix marked the final Off to the Races trip of the 2024 F1 season, following visits to the Spanish and Dutch Grands Prix earlier this year. The voyage to Mexico’s capital city included a four-night stay at a local hotel and a three-day grandstand pass with promises of podium ceremony views — for about €4,000 per person. Aúna, a Food and Travel Best New Mexican Restaurant, and Contramar, a Michelin Guide eatery, are booked a year in advance for post-track day meals. Morning yoga and a tour of the Museo Frida Kahlo offer a moment of quiet before the Formula 1 engines come to life, and a fleet of Mercedes sprinter vans-turned-party buses bring the group to and from the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. 

For 2025, Miami, Barcelona, and Zandvoort already hold a spot on Off to the Races’ travel itinerary, and Zigrang hopes to add Australia, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore in the future. Next season, a “sprint series,” offering three- to four-day itineraries between select double-headers, is on the horizon. The 2025 Spanish Grand Prix package, which includes a similar itinerary plus trackside VIP hospitality, costs €5,000 per person — though travelers share a room.

But sharing a room isn’t a dealbreaker. And for just a little more money, the resulting trip allows fans like Lett in on the sport’s best-kept secret: how it feels to be a trackside VIP for a day. “We’re in hospitality, there’s transportation to and from, then a tour of the Sagrada Familia and a bop around to the fan zone,” Lett gushed. “All the way to a Michelin star dinner and a welcome party with cool influencers. It just so happened that night that Red Bull was on the same rooftop.” 

Despite brushing shoulders with team sponsors and internet celebrities, Lett still can’t quite shake the most thrilling part of it all: hearing the rumble of 20 engines turning over. 

“You literally get goosebumps,” Lett said. “Like, oh my gosh, this is real. This is happening, and I’m hearing it. You’re about to see it in real life. This is not just on my TV anymore.” 

“Do you even know what DRS means?”
Between 2017 and 2022, female fandom for F1 increased by 8 percent, according to Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali. Swelling north of 40 percent of the sport’s total audience, female fans did what they do best: carved out an online community to bond through TikTok edits, fan-made merchandise, and the transfer of nonjudgmental race knowledge. But that wasn’t reflected in the live audiences sweeping the grandstands at the races. 

“Most of the women that were in attendance were there with a partner or they were with family members,” Zigrang said. “I felt that was so disconnected from what I was seeing online, where young women, especially on social media, were pushing the sport forward in interesting ways. You weren’t seeing that translate into attendance in the same way that you had seen men organize themselves historically.”

And while ticket prices and logistics deter female fans from attending grands prix, exclusivity and safety concerns present their own drawbacks as well. At the 2022 Austrian and Dutch Grands Prix, female fans reported being harassed in the grandstands. The FIA raised the issue with circuit promoters and security.

Additionally, women who watch the sport often speak of having to justify their interest while fielding questions like “Do you even know what DRS means?” from incredulous male F1 fans. With only 20 driver names to learn and an abundance of online crash courses, entry into the “upper echelon of motorsport” seems low stakes. However, everyone from casual female spectators to self-proclaimed fangirls has been met with backlash. 

Photo by: Onno Zonneveld

Off to the Races offers an inclusive solution. “A lot of these women don’t, day-to-day, have people to talk to about this fandom with,” Zigrang said. And come the Monday after race day, when the wining and dining has concluded and the final car has crossed the checkered flag, Off to the Races’ attendees fly back to their respective corners of the globe — and the friendships forged from the epic all-female getaway won’t cease.

“We have an Instagram chat that is ongoing every other day, if not every day, where we’re chatting about Formula 1,” Lett said. 

“People are just excited to be able to go enjoy the sport that they love and have a group to do it with,” Zigrang said. “For a lot of women, they’re like, ‘I would have never done this on my own.’”