30 Years Running Sports Tours: What We Know That Others Don’t
It Started With a Bike Shop in California
In 1996, Dick and Marilyn Powell opened The Bicycle Outfitter in Los Altos, California. The tours they started running were built on a philosophy that has not changed: go deep into the sport and the place, travel in small groups, and make sure every detail serves the guest. Jamie and Joy Gilpin took ownership of Outfitter Tours in 2010. Fifteen years and hundreds of tours later, Jamie and Joy launched Motorsports Tours. The brand is new. The knowledge behind it is not.
What the Tour de France Teaches You About F1
The Tour de France is a logistical puzzle of remarkable complexity. The race moves every day, and the route changes EVERY YEAR. Hotels must be selected in villages that have never hosted a tour group before. Roads close without warning. Running TdF tours for fifteen years teaches you things that apply directly to Formula 1: the relationship with local guides is the most important asset you have; group size determines everything about what is possible; the difference between a good tour and a great one is almost never the headline event.
You also learn that guests who feel looked after do not worry about logistics. They are present. They absorb what is around them. Getting to that state requires years of operational refinement, and we have done those years.
The Lesson From Our First Motorsports Tour
In 2025, we ran our first motorsport tour: a combined F1 race at Imola and Giro d’Italia spectator experience in Emilia-Romagna. What we discovered confirmed what we’d suspected: the Motorsports Tours model worked not just as well as our cycling tours, but in some ways better. F1 fans tend to be intensely knowledgeable about the sport. They engage more deeply with the factory access. The connection between the racing heritage of Emilia-Romagna and the region’s food and culture resonated in a way that surprised even us. The guests from that tour have already asked about the next one.
What Thirty Years Gives You That Three Years Cannot
It gives you relationships. The local guide who has been working with us for twelve years has access that a first-year guide does not. The hotel we’ve been returning to for a decade knows what our guests need before we ask.
It gives you operational confidence. When something goes wrong such as a hotel that double-booked, or a factory tour that has to be rescheduled; we have been in these situations before. We know how to solve them without the guests noticing.
It gives you judgment. Not every addition to a tour itinerary makes the tour better. Knowing what to include, what to cut, and what to do with an unexpected two hours is something that accumulates over hundreds of tours and cannot be shortcut. That is what thirty years gives you. That is what we bring to every Motorsports Tours departure.
