I spent Sunday in the sun on the grandstand at the inaugural Grand Prix Masters race which was held at Kyalami International(yeah, whatever) Raceway. They don’t even have a webpage to link to.
So let me get the bitching over first:
1) Kyalami is a great track, surrounded by crappy facilities.
There are no bathrooms anywhere to be found around the track.
The grandstands are not covered, not even on the main straight.
There is no “parking”, it’s just open grass/left over space.
There is no big-screen TV facility to anyone watching at the track.
The audio system is shitty and tinny.
The commentators (mostly) suck.
The entire facility is dilapidated and run-down, giving the feeling of entering an 80’s timewarp.
2) “Eyethu” Events Management would not be able to manage folding a piece of paper in half.
There were no signposts directing ticket holders of various classes to certain areas.
The traffic control was appalling.
The green sticker, which meant nothing, is still stuck to the MIDDLE of my windscreen.
The gatekeeper nearly ended up under my car because the parking was supposedly full.
The attitude towards paying spectators is shit.
The attitude towards paying spectators is really, really shit.
No customer service, whatsoever.
These guys make Dumb and Dumber look like Einstein and Da Vinci.
3) Computicket/Eyethu/whoever arranged the seating arrangements is dumb. Platinum tickets (one of the best almost-affordable tickets) (which I had) were separated into Stands A and B, both at the same price. Stand A was miles away from Stand B. If you had a pass for Stand A you could NOT go to Stand B, and vice versa. Computicket simply sold tickets for Stand B until they ran out and then sold tickets for Stand A, never telling you that you had a *different ticket* which should be sold in a *different category*. I had three tickets – two for Stand B, one for Stand A. So I must sit a kilometre separated from my family, yet the tickets were the same type, in the same grade and class?
Well that’s what Einstein and Da Vinci at the gate were telling me. Fuck that.
I gave them a few choice words, got my brother and mother through the gate and then took a B ticket from my brother, giving him my stand A ticket once he was through.
And five minutes later I walked up to the fools and showed them my B ticket so they let me in.