The grand prix of bling
Forty-plus years ago, F1 found itself relegated to the car park of the famous Caesars Palace casino, scrabbling around a short and slow circuit marked out by concrete blocks. No wonder it didn’t last. This time, inevitably, it’s a little different. Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and co. will be racing around a shiny new 17-turn 3.853-mile street track that includes a blast down the famous Strip itself, right beside Vegas’s famous casinos and hotels: the Bellagio, Venetian, Flamingo and, in a nod to its long-forgotten past, Caesars Palace. Miami and its fake marina? You ain’t seen nothing yet. In terms of bling, glitz and celebrity glamour, Vegas promises to raise the bar – or lower it, depending on your perspective.
Vegas comes alive at night, so it makes sense to run the grand prix under the cover of darkness – especially as it will accentuate the impact of all that neon. Night races in F1 are nothing new, of course. In the wake of the well-established Singapore GP, we’ve seen the shift from daytime running in Bahrain, plus the addition of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to the calendar in recent years. But the Vegas GP represents a major departure, in a number of ways. Primarily, it will be the first grand prix run on a Saturday since the South African GP at Kyalami in 1985. Older readers might recall the British GP running on a Saturday in the days when Sundays in the UK were considered sacrosanct, so you could say it’s something of a throwback. But a 10pm start (6am UK time)? That’s novel, and offers a serious twist for the teams and drivers too. Nevada nights can be cold this time of year, so low temperatures will offer a challenge that is the polar opposite (pun intended!) of what drivers faced recently in Qatar.