French Grand Prix traffic problems 'ridiculous' for F1

With the infrastructure around the French circuit not ideal for a major sporting event, traffic queues stretched for several miles, and many fans gave up attending the track at all after being stuck for hours while Formula 1 practice was on.

Force India COO Otmar Szafnauer said he had a cancel a business meeting after a guest ran out of time to get to the track.

"It took us two hours to go 10 miles," he said. "It was ridiculous.

"We had a guest who was flying in to have a meeting with me and then flying back.

"He never made it to the meeting. He had to turnaround and go back to the airport.

"He phoned me and said: 'Sorry, I've moved 7km in two and a half hours, my flight is at 5pm. I have to turn back'."

Szafnauer said the traffic issue should be a worry to F1's bosses because fans could be put off entirely by the problems.

"For me it is not a big issue if it takes me two hours to go 10 miles, I am going to come here anyway," he said.

"If I was a fan and on Friday it took me two and a half hours to go seven kilometres I might think twice, and that is the problem.

"The fans have choice, and they will probably choose events where it doesn't take two and a half hours to cover seven kilometres."

It wasn't just fans and team members facing problems, though, because Sebastian Vettel and Romain Grosjean had to be forceful at a police roadblock after they were told they could not go any further.

Grosjean said: "It's not easier [as drivers], because policemen, I'll quote them, "we don't care" that we're drivers.

I was with Sebastian Vettel, we got stopped by policemen at the 'yield' sign. We stopped normally.

"Then, we wanted to go, but they didn't want to let us go. I explained that we were drivers and without drivers, there's no show. That's when they told me "we don't care".

"[Then] We sped up! It's a bit of a shame, it's a bit surprising. We had our passes, our team gear, everything."