Fans usually have to buy paddock passes if they want to gain access to exclusive areas of the circuit during a race weekend. These paddock passes are the getaway tickets that allow one to meet with their favorite F1 stars. However, one F1 expert revealed how his family did the unthinkable by bypassing security to get inside the paddock and steal memorable moments with Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso.
The average paddock pass reportedly costs a staggering $3671. It certainly would not be feasible for most people to get hold of these passes on a common basis. But Andrew Frankl, the co-founder of Car Magazine could have easily afforded one such pass if they hadn’t been sold out.
Regardless, the unavailability of the pass did not act as a hindrance in the end. The family used their brain and were able to play with the security to get inside the paddock, without a pass.
How did the family enter the paddock with the F1 pass?
In the Business F1 magazine, Frankl described that his son Nicholas took his two children to the 2023 Monaco Grand Prix paddock without a proper pass. He used his brain to lift them up over the turnstile and they were in!
This happened during Liberty Media’s tenure, but he also shared an interesting comparison. He shared that this would not have been possible during Bernie Ecclestone’s era.
Ecclestone is the former boss of F1, and the paddock had a very different and high level of security when he was in charge of the sport. These measures were usually done to prevent unauthorized access.
How was Ecclestone’s time different from that of Liberty Media?
During Ecclestone’s time, things were a lot different when it came to running F1. The sport was not as widely open and accessible to the fans as it is today. This is partly due to the sport’s increase in popularity, and the boom on social media.
Furthermore, there were very few influencers as well as renowned personalities invited for the race weekends back in the day. Today, that is a very common occurrence under Liberty Media’s leadership. It is fair to say that they do a lot more that what Ecclestone did, when it comes to marketing.
The most important step among them was allowing Netflix to start the Drive to Survive docuseries. Through the series, F1 was able to penetrate the North American market as well as develop an extensive fan base all around the world.
