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it's a similar situation for eurocup/3.5 at monaco. paddock is several km away from the pitlane in france - no loss really, it's very peaceful. practice and qualifying are both before 10am, practice usually starts at 8-something and requires a 7am assembly area call. the race is at a seemingly decent time on sunday, but since there is no padding in the schedule, you ARE the padding. because of the lack of space for usual tyre change equipment and the lack of time to spare, if it rains and everyone starts on slicks it's red flag, race over, no matter how long the race has gone on for (certainly with 3.5, not sure about eurocup). since there's not time/willingness to make time, eurocup now goes all that way for one 20minute race. the 3.5 race was twice as long by default. the passes you get issued with kick you out of the circuit at midday on sunday. tough luck if your guests want to watch the big race from the general admission secteur rocher - in practice, not possible, but the gesture would cost them nothing. actually getting into the pitlane is fun too - you have a 15min max window to do so, after which it's tough luck. and whilst you're in there expect at least one row with someone telling you you can't be there, despite everyone in the teams having the same pass. especially if you're female.
tl;dr - you get treated like poo by the acm and fom, but at least the kids get to race at monaco before the f1 race. it's not really a great advert for competing in gp2/gp3 :/
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