Tag: Las Vegas GP

Has a new Formula 1 race ever been more hyped and more derided than the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix?

During the event and in the days since, I have seen countless pundits declare the event a “failure” or “disaster.” Meanwhile, several journalists have described it as a resounding success. Why the dichotomy? Well, many of the derisive articles or social media diatribes were scribed by people who were nowhere near the event. I was there. What’s more, while I’ve spent the last 30 years at racing events involved in the motorsports events I’ve attended or reporting on them, for the first time in three decades I spent my own money to attend a racing event purely as a spectator.

First, why did I feel this was one I must attend? Well, a Formula 1 race that I can get to with a one-hour flight, don’t have to rent a car and can stay at a hotel within walking distance of the circuit? Sign me up. And you only get one chance to witness the first of something.

My RACER colleague Chris Medland has already offered his assessment of the event. Medland’s perspective came from the media side, as mine usually does. Allow me to offer a slightly different take on the race than you might typically see at RACER, and a counterpoint to the vitriol spewed on social media by people who watched from afar.

Let us first deal with the elephant in the room: Thursday night’s FP1 and FP2 fiasco. The first edition of any street race has issues. Baku, for example, had a very similar issue to Las Vegas, and it’s one that has cropped up at many street races, almost all of which have problems of some kind in their first year. I flagged the inaugural Grand Prix du Mardi Gras IMSA race in New Orleans in 1991 — cars didn’t even get on track until after noon on Friday because they hadn’t finished constructing the circuit. An organizer can take all the precautions they can think of, but there’s no way to test that preparation until there are high-downforce Formula 1 cars running over the drains and other accoutrements that the rest of us don’t have to think about driving down the same street.

So, a failed drain on a first-time street circuit was no surprise. And F1 and the FIA took care of it, inspecting and putting in additional precautions on all the drains on the circuit. This took some time, and thus delayed FP2.

This is where the organizers failed — not in the fact that second practice was delayed, but the fact that paying spectators had been kept in the dark (pun only slightly intended). Neither through the official app that had the ability to push notifications, nor through the trackside PA system, nor through the radio was there any communication whatsoever that FP2 had been delayed from its 12am scheduled start time, nor why.

Then, an hour before the practice was to actually begin, the first communication was that fans would have to leave. Exactly why this had to happen will come out in the many lawsuits that either have or will be filed against the organizers. But keep in mind that the workers on site — who were generally knowledgable and helpful — had been there, on their feet, for at least seven-and-a-half hours since the gates had opened at 6pm. Asking them to stay, overtime pay or not, until after FP2 ended at 4am would have meant more than a 10-hour day.

Should Liberty Media, the owner of the commercial rights to F1 and promoter of the event — a role it was performing for the first time — have had a contingency plan for this, especially knowing the things that can go wrong with a temporary street circuit? Probably. But let’s also be realistic — the number of fans who showed up for FP2 was small. If you were one of them, it was annoying and frustrating. But many more of those who might collect from the results of any class-action lawsuit were parked at Blackjack tables or in bed. Frankly, I’ve seen more online outrage from people who were nowhere near the event than I did from the fans told to leave their seats at 1:30am.

After that, from all appearances, the event ran without a hitch. Ingress and egress to the venue were easy. If you had a question of where the restrooms were, where to find food, how to get to your seat, there were lots of people with LED signs that read “Ask Me.”

Other than Thursday night’s mishap and the errors in dealing with same, complaints about the race centered on costs. Hotels were initially offering absurd rates, despite the fact that the total race weekend attendance would be a small percentage of the rooms available; the hotels learned their lesson and adjusted, albeit slowly. The tickets were perhaps the most expensive of any F1 race, but how many seats at F1 races include all-you-can-eat food, water and soft drinks in the price of a ticket? Las Vegas did.

There was also plenty of semi-big-name entertainment for spectators when cars weren’t on track, as if Las Vegas itself didn’t already offer enough to do. By the way, looking for last-minute tickets, the expensive ones were gone. Paddock Club was sold out, as was the Skybox on the front straight. The only tickets on the front-straight grandstand were resale. From what I’ve seen, only the cheaper grandstand seats remained empty.

There were also complaints about the times, especially from those who wanted to watch from the East Coast. Well, welcome to inhospitable hours to watch F1 from those of us on the West Coast, for whom European races usually start at 6am. And if you think the city of Las Vegas is going to close Las Vegas Blvd. at noon, or keep it closed for three days, you’re nuts. Could the sessions and race have started a bit earlier? Perhaps, and I’m sure that’s being considered.

That said, I feel for the drivers who finished a race near midnight Saturday night, and have to immediately adjust to a time zone 12 hours away; and that goes for the crews, officials and media as well. If the time for the race has to be the same, Las Vegas needs to be on its own on the season schedule, two weeks apart from another race on both ends.

All that said, the race I saw Saturday night was a success. The competition was good. The front-straight grandstands were packed. Seats had good views of big screens to catch the action on other parts of the track. And the spectacle was, well, a spectacle. Some thought it over the top, but that’s Vegas. Why shouldn’t a race take on the flavor of its host?

The city and local businesses seemed all-in on the race. Certainly some of the locals were sour on it but most seemed to embrace it with some level of enthusiasm. There were many additional activities surrounding the race — a Sotheby’s auction where Lewis Hamilton’s first winning F1 Mercedes sold for more than $18 million; pop-ups from teams and manufacturers galore, such as McLaren’s exhibit inside the Wynn; countless sponsorship activations and lots of fantastic places to hold them; F1 cars on display in all the hotels.

Speaking of hotels, how many F1 circuits can count hotel rooms far in excess of the venue’s capacity within a half-mile of the circuit? If every individual that attended a day of the event stayed in their own room, there would still be thousands more rooms available. There are individual hotels on Las Vegas Blvd. that have more rooms than all of Monte Carlo. So the hotels will have revised expectations next year and price accordingly. And, booking a month out from the event, I paid less than it would have cost to stay in the same hotel during SEMA week.

My friends and others I spoke to in attendance plan on returning next year. My media colleagues have relayed the praise directed at the race, and one photographer friend described it as a great event. And speaking of photographers, have you seen some of the spectacular images they produced with the city of Las Vegas as a backdrop?

Several drivers have voiced their approval of the event, and even its biggest critic, Max Verstappen, was literally singing a different tune at the end. What, in any of that, sounds like a failure?

It wasn’t. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t a disaster, either. And it’s almost guaranteed to be be better next year.

It was big, it was brash, it was brilliant at times and it was bewildering at others. The Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend was a contradiction at pretty much every turn.

The hype leading into the first event was massive, from a Formula 1 perspective at least. Once on the ground and outside the paddock bubble, those contradictions were quickly obvious.

Across three different Uber drivers — the stock barometer of a street event that disrupts driving routes — there was the full spread. The first I had on Tuesday evening was hugely excited about the event, the chance to see F1 cars on the Strip and the smooth road surface he’d been left with as a result of the track preparation work.

While that positive opening suggested a warm welcome, the driver also claimed that those who are complaining will complain about anything and not look at the benefits. That experience was followed by a more critical driver who was frustrated by the road closures and fell asleep watching the race on television. While driver number two thought it was a cool event, they weren’t a fan of the disruption (or all that impressed by Lando Norris’ crash…).

The third opinion sat right in the middle. Not overly bothered, pleased for the extra business that the race had brought, but admitting the impact on traffic was a little annoying.

It’s a theme that extended to bar staff in the casinos (I know, tough job but I had to do my research), who were excited to have a new influx of fans to Vegas.

Don’t let Max Verstappen’s comments this week fool you. Sin City might not be for everyone — and different races should cater to different tastes — but there were fans learning about F1 in town.

First, I was stunned at the amount of merchandise that was being worn as you walked around. In a claimed attendance of 315,000 over the weekend — and claimed is the word there — you’d expect to see a lot of fans, but it still stood out as they moved through the different resorts before heading trackside.

It sparked up plenty of conversations, where you’d overhear those who were just in Vegas for more traditional Vegas reasons asking questions about the race and the sport, or fellow fans giving each other advice.

At an event for a team sponsor I attended on Saturday morning, a couple of guests who were just planning on partying and leaving before the race started were hooked on the idea of taking in the whole grand prix — and trying to make watching on TV with their kids a family tradition in future — within half an hour of chatting with others who were watching.

Little boosts like that don’t excuse some of the failings, though.

There was definitely increased focus simply because it was Vegas. F1 was invested as a promoter and the race had given itself such a billing that it was almost dealing with self-made expectations that it simply could not match. That also meant it perhaps came in for greater criticism than other venues would.

I think back to the 2019 Azerbaijan Grand Prix and George Russell seeing his Williams attacked by a drain cover — before the recovery vehicle then also hit a start light gantry on its return to the pit straight — and I’ll admit I don’t remember the same clamor for refunds for spectators based on the lost practice time.

Teams and drivers in Baku were frustrated but able to make up for it in FP2 and the rest of the weekend continued without issue, and the speed of the repair (admittedly not leading to a delay to F1’s schedule) is deemed impressive in hindsight.

The problem for F1 and LVGP was that if you tell everyone something’s going to be amazing and setting a new standard, and then you cause huge disruption to do that, a track safety failing within 10 minutes of the running starting is not acceptable.

A bit of humility and an apology — even in a city where a lawsuit was coming within 36 hours regardless — would have gone far further than doubling down with “it happens” and a $200 voucher for the store rather than reimbursement.

Fortunately, that was to prove the low point, much to the relief of the organizing team. As you moved further away from the embarrassing situation of Thursday, more the good things came to the fore.

The track looked spectacular, movement was relatively simple and it was unashamedly Vegas in a way that it really had to be given the location.

But a big part of what any grand prix boils down to is the sporting event, and despite Verstappen’s earlier quotes, that was definitely more than one percent.

It might have been 99 percent show compared to some other events, but it was 100 percent a race in the same way any other round of the championship is, and the track delivered a thriller.

“I’m really, really happy to have had a positive race,” Lewis Hamilton told Sky Sports as Saturday night became Sunday morning. “I’m really grateful that the race was so good. I don’t know how it was as a spectacle for people to watch, but there was so much overtaking. It was like Baku, but better.

“I really wasn’t expecting the track to be so great, but the more and more laps you did, I just really loved racing. Lots of great overtaking opportunities.

“I think for all those that were so negative about the weekend, saying it’s all about show, blah, blah, blah.. I think Vegas proved them wrong.”

It did this time, but there’s no guarantee the race will deliver every year. The great on-track action doesn’t mean the whole week was perfect, so plenty of lessons need to be learned for 2024. The schedule, for one, really needs to change, with drivers and team members exhausted by the extreme change in working hours from both their usual headquarters and compared to the following round.

Earlier starts wouldn’t just be better for those working in the paddock, though, with the U.S. audience benefiting on the East Coast, and fans in attendance likely to face more comfortable temperatures.

Track opening and closing definitely needs to be quicker in future, too, but more importantly it will need to be able to be constructed later in the year and removed rapidly to minimize disruption.

Ticket and hotel prices definitely need to be revisited. The high-end options looked impressive but the brilliant race will have even more fans who can only afford GA keen to attend for the sporting spectacle. Vegas can certainly accommodate for them, and has plenty of other ways to try and tempt them to part with their money.

Clear areas for improvement do exist, and the race organizers would do well to explain how they will be focused on them as soon as realistically possible.

After boasting it was going to win big before it even sat at the table, and then losing chips early on, it feels like the race ended up for the night.