“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 Spect.
