F1 Arcade, St Paul’s, London

F1 Arcade was the first of its kind to bring Formula One racing simulation adventure to the city of London. Located within ‘One New Change’, right next door to the St Paul’s Cathedral. The joining of Formula 1® and Kindred Concepts brought the launch of this first F1 licensed premium experiential venue, with further national and global expansion plans in place.

The immersive state of the art F1 racing simulation comes with 69 motion F1 simulators enabling guests to experience the thrill of racing, complemented by a best-in-class food offering and beverages including champagne cocktails to add glamour to the competitive socialising experience.

The sleek, stylish venue features bespoke racing simulators complete with motion and audio-visual effects to fully immerse guests in the race. A newly created gameplay experience created by Motorsport Games, via its RFactor2 racing simulation platform, will allow guests to choose from a variety of racing modes to compete against each other individually, in team-based groups, or as part of all-venue racing formats.

Renata Zywicka said: “It’s incredible how two former restaurants and a retail unit have been joined together, transforming a quiet area of the shopping centre into a “go-to” location. Interestingly, what is now the stunning F1 Arcade private dining room, used to be a staff canteen in the previous retail unit, benefitting from an incredible view over St. Paul’s Cathedral.

“This whole concept is brilliant, and it is something many people were looking for, a place to watch the Grand Prix’s that is not a sports bar, a place that includes that key element of social entertainment accompanied by an incredible food and beverage offer. This concept is so much more than any other similar venue opened so far.

The bar and kitchen areas were not based around any specification, it was an idea in its infancy. We had previously worked with the client at another venue and we had a depth of knowledge of the type of equipment that worked well within that scheme but we needed to look at this with a fresh approach. As the project evolved the client slowly started to bring their operations team on board.  We had to be flexible with changes to equipment both in design and specification, which also meant that services that had also been designed into the scheme had to reflect the changes that were made to certain products.

The bar itself also continued to evolve with the front of house operational team coming on board. The bar was 13m long with 5 stations comprising of beer fonts & cocktail stations on the fabrication to achieve a nice, smooth design to the countertop

There was a lot of coordination with the shopfitter because of the complex and impressive nature of the design of the bar and the hot pass, clearly to match the nature of the F1 Arcade building.  Ana Moisin, of Anamo Design Studios designed the front of house area’s which are both extremely visual with very high end finishes, so there was a huge amount of coordination on the bars and the pass to ensure that the clients interior designers ideas came to fruition.

An important part of our project management was to ensure we remained as flexible as possible with our designs to accommodate changes as the project progressed without making drastic alterations to the services.

It was a continuation of meeting the clients demands and working within the confines of the space we had allocated and any services which had been designed into the project to reflect what was required.

The whole project took 7 months from concept to completion, which was a quick turnaround for a project of this size, and the opening took place in time for Christmas 2022.

We carried out extensive staff training prior to their first service, this was carried out just prior to hand over to allow them sufficient time to be accustomed to the equipment before their grand opening.