Supercar and open wheel racing in Barcelona

Formula GT (Barcelona) is one of many companies that offer both open wheel and supercar driving experiences in Europe. They operate at the Circuit-de-Catalunya (yes, that’s the home of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix). Given the location of the operation, you’d expect that this driving experience will be top notch. Sadly, this isn’t the case. However, it’s not all bad news.

Cars

In addition to a Formula 3 open wheel car, they offer Ferraris(430 and 458, 430 Challenge) and Lamborghinis (Gallardo and Huracan) . They have a few other cars but nothing worth mentioning.

Customer Care

Formula GT lost most of my experience video to a bad SD card. Normally, I wouldn’t mention this since accidents happen but they stated that I would have been allowed to repeat the experience if they hadn’t run out of track time (a clear indication of poor planning).

Safety

Formula GT takes a very informal approach to the safety briefing. In fact, their briefing is the shortest we’ve encountered (not counting manufacturer experiences where they don’t usually have one). In addition, it was done in a hallway with everyone on their feet! The open-wheel briefing was even worse. No one took the time to mention the need to be able to drive a manual transmission (the information isn’t on their website). If you end up in Barcelona hoping to drive this car and you can’t operate a manual shifter, you’re going to have to hope the beautiful city of Barcelona was still worth the trip. This is also the only open wheel experience we’re aware of that doesn’t offer racing suits to drivers.

Race Track

It’s the home of the Spanish Grand Prix, and it’s the full length. Nothing to complain about here. With that red F3 car, you can easily see yourself as a Scuderia Ferrari driver. It’s worth mentioning that not all Formula GT experiences use the full track, so you need to pay attention while shopping.

Damage Liability

Full insurance with no deductible is included in the price you pay for the experience.

Video Quality

The video quality is good, and it doesn’t have any branding. A refreshing departure from what you'll get with most driving experiences

Bottom Line

Formula GT comes across as a “toy experience”. More like a theme park experience than anything else. Unlike other top open-wheel experiences, you have to drive behind a “safety car” (given how short the briefing is, that’s probably a good thing).

If you’re looking for an excellent open wheel driving experience (even on this particular track), there are better options out there. Having said that though, if you’re not looking for anything particularly challenging or you just want to experience driving at the Catalunya race track, this is not a bad experience to try.