Volunteering at Hungaroring 2024

Hungary Grand Prix from my perspective.

Before I start - I will try to keep this as professional as possible and try to give an open minded review of the occasion that brought us three together.

At first, I want to give a glance at the communication. It was either per E-Mail or on Facebook- which I had to create an Account on- just for many messages to not get through to me. The messages that got through were often in Hungarian which I couldn’t understand in any way- important information was written in English. Overall the Communication was the roughest part as most of the people on the Security Team could only speak Hungarian and we mostly worked with them. But as we worked in Teams of two people most of the Volunteers that couldn’t speak Hungarian got teamed up with a Hungarian speaking person. Through that I was able to communicate at least a bit but most of the communication went over my teammate and if it wasn’t for his translation I would’ve known nothing.

As we got shown the Track and our tasks the main language in our group (we got divided into multiple smaller groups) was Hungarian even though many of us said that we only speak English. Vicky can share that experience because we met at our Group picture or more recognized each other as we exchanged some messages before the Volunteering started. So by the end I wasn’t any smarter. But safe to say I got it working for me. Our tasks mainly contained helping the security with questions from people that couldn’t speak Hungarian. Due to good positions, we were able to see the track really good and I was able to see every Session from Formula One and some from Formula two and Formula three. In between shifts I had to cool off a lot because it was super hot and we had no shade at our positions so I missed a lot on Track action. But we had some containers with AC which was very nice.

Most of my shifts were super cool, the people were nice, and I even met a very good friend of Kevin Magnussen who wanted to explore the track a bit- he was super nice so we talked for a bit. With most of my shifts I mean every shift until the one 2 hours prior to the Grand Prix start. At the Hungarian Grand Prix was a One-way System which basically meant that people that Exit the one Gate couldn’t go back in the same way and had to do a walk around at the top (except to Grandstands that were right by the Entrance of that Gate). To say that people got mad would be an understatement. The amount of people that screamed at me, pushed me to the side or even threw words at me (Yes old man I understood what you said in German to me) because I was basically helping. From 1:30 pm till 2:45 pm a lot of my work involved me arguing with people. As it calmed down and everyone sat at their seats, I was able to watch the Race myself from a good position.

That’s where I met Lorena for the first time, and we watched the Race together. After the Race we were able to watch the Podium from the perfect spot and it was amazing. If you read until this sentence you might think: What a horrible Experience but I have to say it wasn’t as bad as it sounded. Yes, communicating was a bit harder sometimes. Yes, we had a lot of waiting time. Yes, it was super hot (nothing they could’ve done against). BUT I met so many great People and the wonderful Friendship between Lorena, Vicky and I came out of this. We were able to do a Pitlane walk before everyone else and we saw Brad Pitt! As we collected our Deposit we were able to see some of the Drivers leaving (George Russell even slowed down for us). I was able to see many sessions and I didn’t have to pay a ticket and maybe the most important one: I was able to work in Formula One! It was definitely a very cool experience as everyone was talking about Formula One and we had a lot of fun.

I´m very grateful for the Experience I was able to have but I didn’t apply to be a Volunteer again. In the end I have to say that having a good volunteer experience is always dependent on the people around you and they were amazing! With some I shared the same Hostel so we went around together. Vicky and I had a wild Taxi Ride back to the city (as our shifts ended super early and we had a waiting time of over three hours) and I have some really good memories as well.

As I'm an active Volunteer writing this (not in Formula One) and I do know that Volunteer Experiences can be very different. In Hungary I felt unnecessary a lot of the time which I'm not used to. I think if some small changes would be made it would’ve been very different and to everyone thinking about doing it: Do it! It's amazing to meet new people and it’s amazing to get a bit inside the world of Formula One.

Annik 💕