[Official] Las Vegas Grand Prix 2023: Grand Prix Weekend Thread - Round 22 of 23

[Born Racer]

The obvious match made in Heaven, or rather Sin City, has finally been staged, as the unique big kids’ playground of Las Vegas welcomes the controversial, contemporary and more media-savvy world of Formula 1. Excess, exuberance, absurdity, grandiosity, pomposity, greed and gaudiness (and the occasional bit of cheating) – these words can all be levelled at both Las Vegas and Formula 1. Both can be divisive, but they generally at least provoke opinion. A Las Vegas Grand Prix has been touted for some time, ideally aligned with the modern-day Netflix-generation promotion of the series, and they’ve gone all in, with a circuit which takes in some of the city’s most iconic visual features and hosts a Saturday night race.

The history

Before all of this razzmatazz, however, we need to take a step back 42 years and remind ourselves that the first time Formula 1 attempted a Grand Prix in Las Vegas, it failed to inspire.

The year was 1981 and the event was the Caesars Palace Grand Prix, a race not only sponsored by the famous hotel and casino, but actually held in its car park. The 3.65km track featured two very similar sequences of corners from Turns 2 to 5 and 5 to 10, featuring a fairly fast left, a hairpin right and a sharp right. The average speed was around 160 kph, while the anti-clockwise layout prompted neck pain among various drivers. It was tight, but wide, with a smooth surface and sandy run-offs.

The event was the 15th and final race of the season, which Williams’s Carlos Reutemann (on 49 points), Brabham’s Nelson Piquet (on 48) and Ligier’s Jacques Laffite (on 43) all went into with a chance of taking the drivers’ championship. Reutemann took pole, but in the race (held on a Saturday, like in the contemporary incarnation), his teammate Alan Jones (in what was, at the time, scheduled to be his last Grand Prix) jumped into the lead off the line, and the Williams championship contender slipped behind Gilles Villeneuve, Alain Prost and Bruno Giacomelli. Villeneuve was disqualified for taking up his grid slot incorrectly, although his engine expired before he pitted. Prost had long passed Villeneuve, while Piquet overtook Reutemann on Lap 17 after the Williams driver braked surprisingly early. Reutemann trundled along to 8th place, while Piquet, despite exhaustion, claimed enough points in 5th to take his first world title. Jones won from Prost, in the Renault, and Giacomelli, in his Alfa Romeo. An interesting name among the non-qualifiers was Jacques Villeneuve, uncle of the 1997 world champion, in an Arrows.

For 1982, the original idea was to put F1, CART (Indycars) and Can-Am on the same bill, with the F1 on the Saturday and the track being converted into a kind of oval for the Sunday CART race. In the end, the event was brought forward to September and only the Can-Am remained (it had also been on the bill the previous year). This was the first year that a country had hosted three rounds in F1 in a single season – with Las Vegas, Detroit and Long Beach all running events (and this year, Las Vegas is the third of three in the US again).

Again a title decider, this time between Keke Rosberg in the Williams and John Watson in the McLaren, Watson only had an outside chance of the title (33 points to Rosberg’s 42). Alain Prost maintained the lead from pole in his Renault, with teammate René Arnoux in pursuit. While trying to pass, Eddie Cheever touched the wheels on his Ligier with Michele Alboreto’s Tyrrell, but they kept going. Arnoux got ahead of Prost but retired on Lap 20 with an engine failure. Alboreto eventually got by Prost to take his first Grand Prix win and Tyrrell’s first since 1978. Prost picked up a tyre vibration and dropped back, with John Watson (who had fallen as low as twelfth early on) runner-up and Cheever third. Watson was also runner-up in the championship, as Rosberg, like Piquet the previous year, took 5th and got enough points to take the title win, his first and only one. The race was notable for being Mario Andretti's final Formula 1 race.

Widely unpopular, Caesars Palace dropped off the F1 calendar and the area was used for two more years on a modified version of the layout for CART, before the Mirage hotel and casino and Forum Shops at Caesars were built on it.

Since then, F1 has toyed with a proper return to Vegas, giving it the truly integrated experience it required. Although it is worth remembering that besides all the gambling, Las Vegas is a big sports destination in the States, Vegas is also all about the show and the lights and an F1 race always had to be a night race, in my view. After F1 hosted a mounting succession of night races, beginning with Singapore in 2008, I would have thought Las Vegas as an F1 spectacle gained traction again.

The powers-that-be have bided their time and waited until F1 has already made an impact in the US again, and on television/ streaming. It looks like we have been primed and the right time is now.


The track

The race will take place on Saturday night (22:00 local time) over 50 laps of the 17-turn 6.201 km circuit, which is expected to be cooler than you might have first thought (remember, it’s out in the desert and it’s November), with Pirelli bringing its softest compounds.

The track required extensive resurfacing of the existing roads, something I can attest to from my visit to Vegas in April 2022.

Shortly after Jeddah did this, Las Vegas becomes the second-longest track on the calendar, after Spa-Francorchamps. It is estimated that around 66% of the lap will be run at full throttle. Top speeds may hover around 350 km/h.
Turn 1 is one of the biggest braking zones in the lap. It is a left-hand hairpin that goes almost immediately into the left-hander at 2. The pit exit is here between Turns 2 and 3, with Turns 3 and 4 some of the faster bends, which lead on to the first straight on Koval Lane, which passes the High Roller big wheel.

Reaching the end of the straight is a fairly heavy braking area into the 90 degree right-hander of Turn 5, before the sequence to Turn 9 winds its way past the Madison Square Garden Sphere. The faster Turn 6 leads to the tighter 7 and less sharp Turn 8, before drivers head into Turn 9, starting quite tight, but widening on the exit and taking them on to Sanda Avenue.
Turns 10 and 11 are a faster sequence, curving past The Venetian, before the tight left at 12, a crucial corner, as it leads on to the 1.9 km-sequence of The Strip – the cars will whizz past such Las Vegas giants as Treasure Island, The Mirage, Caesars Palace, Bellagio and Paris Las Vegas. Amidst this, there is a high-speed kink (Turn 13).

Turn 14 is the next big stop, a 90-left, before the cars charge right and then left out of 15 and 16 and bend through 17 on to the start-finish straight.




Other information

Circuit length: 6.201 km
Number of laps: 50
Race distance: 310.05 km
Dry weather tyre compounds: C3, C4 and C5

Race Lap Record: n/a
First Grand Prix in Las Vegas: 1981
First Las Vegas Grand Prix: 2023
First Grand Prix at this circuit: 2023
First Grand Prix on current configuration: 2023

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