Been to both F1 races, Continental Tires series, Australian V8 supercars, etc, so we have tried various locations. Best tickets are @ Turn 15. Some of the best sight lines on the track, but most people know this and the tickets are at a premium. Given what we know about the track now, we get.....General Admission tickets. Why? First year, we sat in Turn 5, and paid $400/ticket, w/no parking (park and ride + 2 hr wait leaving). This year, we sat in G.A. and paid $60/ticket, w/$50 for parking. 4 of us went, so you can figure out the math.
The goals for 2013 were:
a) to be able to pack a cooler full of food/alcohol (b/c as mentioned, the food is overpriced and kinda meh),
b) be able to get to our car from our seats pretty quickly,
c) to have good viewing angles,
d) to have amenities nearby, and
e) to miss as much traffic as possible on the way out.
Based on previous race attendance and the ability to survey the track, I settled on the hairpin (Turn 11, between 11E and 11W). It met all the criteria and offered a parking lot that is a short walk to our seats. You can see the cars rocketing down from T10, and disappearing down to T12. Lots of action in there, too (passing). In July, COTA ran a special via Ticketmaster for GA and parking, but they were trying to put you in lot F (you couldn't selet your parking lot). However, I called COTA and was able to get the GA special
and parking lot selection (your lot is printed on your pass), as we wanted lot "L". We got there @ 930, brought lawn chairs and a couple blankets and were set. The view was excellent! At the end of the race when Vettel did his burnout? He did it in on the runoff area directly in front of us, so we had a front row view. We had 5 mins of traffic, and were moving freely after that. This will be our plan going forward for all race events. Hope all of this helps.
The only thing that kinda sucked was the weather was cool (50-60 degrees) and cloudy in the morning, then broke out to sunny and 90+ degrees (100 degrees track side, which we were). Unfortunately, our chairs didn't have umbrellas, but that will be remedied for the 2014 race
