When organizers of this weekend’s Formula One festivities began planning for the arrival of tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world, they had a choice for how big and ambitious to get with entertainment and cultural options.

Looking at current and past host cities of the high-profile races, they could go the way of Monaco and Montreal, which turn the events into city-wide blowout celebrations, or aim for a more low-key approach like Indianapolis and Long Beach, Calif., which went light on non-race events during their years as F1 hosts.

For a city where hosting festivals with international appeal is close to a monthly occurrence, the only reasonable choice for Austin planners was to make a splash.

“Where the races have really done well and found a home have been places where it’s been a big gala type of event, like in Monaco and Montreal, and that’s what we thought made sense for the live music capital,” said Paul Thornton, president of TAG Presents, which handles all event programming for the new Circuit of the Americas race track.

One of the biggest components of that effort is the Austin Fan Fest, which will feature three days of free and ticketed concerts from nearly 100 musical acts, including headliners such as Aerosmith, Flo Rida and Enrique Iglesias.

While those marquee names will be somewhat glitzy, high-dollar affairs at the Frank Erwin Center, ACL Live and the Austin Convention Center, the bulk of the music and other entertainment will be free and focused in a nine-block section of downtown near ACL Live. That’s roughly an area between Second and Fifth streets, and Lavaca and Brazos streets that will feature five stages of music and other attractions each day and well into the nights.

Thornton and other planners were careful to pack much Austin and Texas talent onto the festival’s stages, with well-known locals like Bob Schneider, Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears, Fastball, La Guerilla and more getting a chance to play for international audiences.

“We’ve got a vibrant downtown to show off to the more than 800 media outlets who are going to be here shooting video to go all over the world,” Thornton said. “That’s going to create amazing awareness of what we have here in Austin and a big part of that will be five stages of free music.”

The downtown event will also feature racing simulators and exhibits, interactive displays and food and drink offerings from a selection of Austin restaurants. Thornton said in addition to appealing to visitors and race officials who will become yearly attendees, the festival was designed to provide free entertainment options to locals who might not know much about racing.

“There’s something of a hard pill to swallow when you’ve got all these people coming in for the first time and you don’t really know what it’s all for,” he said. “We wanted this to be as inclusive as possible, with tons of local talent and things families could do like bring their kids downtown to try out a simulator to see what the cars are really like.”

Austin rock band Bright Light Social Hour will take part in Fan Fest with an 11:15 p.m. show Saturday on the Bud Light Stage. Bassist/vocalist Jack O’Brien said the band is looking forward to the event even if, like lots of Austinites, he’s mostly unfamiliar with the sport and its appeal to fans all over the world.

“It’s crazy because there’s just something that keeps on causing kinda younger, ambitious people to flock to our town,” O’Brien said. “You hear about someone like Flo Rida being a part of it and see that it’s a big deal, but it’s really cool they are having it with so many local artists out there, so there are lots of Austin bands there for people to see for the first time.”