The Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix appears to have been a huge hit despite teething problems on the first day of track action. The event is locked into the calendar for the next nine years and will always be the weekend before the US holiday of Thanksgiving.
Next year the race will move back a week given Thanksgiving will be celebrated on November 28th and the return to Sin City will begin the start of a triple header that will conclude in Abu Dhabi on December 8th.
Las Vegas date ‘locked in’
As with all new sporting venues, there will be necessary alterations to how F1 will manage the weekend adopted from lessons learned this year. Though it may take a mother season for these to be fully realised given the F1 calendar for 2024 is already set.
F1 did a deal with the city authorities to hold the event on the second quietest weekend of the year for economic reasons though this may not be set in stone given the future aspirations of the sport. With 24 races scheduled going forward and the four week break during August set in stone, something has to give regarding the beginning and end of the huge calendar of events.
For 2024 this means the racing will continue until just over two weeks before Christmas Day and it begins February 29th after pre-season testing in Bahrain.
This year as happened in Qatar, it appears a number of the drivers failed to prepare properly in the run up ton the weekend. In Qatar the searing heat required hydration techniques to begin at least seven days before the event and a number of drivers began this too late.
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Drivers ill prepared for Vegas
The effects were obvious as some drivers were visibly ill after the event, whilst Fernando Alonso the oldest amongst the current crop at 42 yrs claimed it wasn’t even in the top five of most difficult races he’d experienced during his career.
Las Vegas too caught out some of the F1 personnel though it wasn’t temperature related this time, but time Zone relevant.
Whilst Las Vegas is on the Pacific Coast Tine Zone, the late night time of the on track action made it feel more as though the teams were competing in Japan.
Of course there had been a free weekend between the previous race in Brazil and the Vegas extravaganza, but the gruelling schedule resulted in calls from Red Bull boss Christian Horner to move the start times earlier as it left “everyone “f%$ked”.
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Ricciardo claims drivers “Hallucinating”
Daniel Ricciardo offered a little more of an insight into how the time shift back eight hours from GMT – where most of the teas are based – and the late night/early morning track times had impacted the drivers.
“It was definitely sketchy, I don’t know what they can do with the track opening times, but if they do have flexibility, I think for everyone’s health and safety, they need to bring it forward,” Ricciardo said.
“Everyone would be operating with just a bit more juice in the tank. After Thursday and that late session (with Free Practice 2 not finishing until 04:00 Friday local time), I feel like all of us have probably been delirious and hallucinating.”
Given the late hour on Saturday evening when the Grand Prix celebrations finally subsided, the team personnel were only planning to move on to Abu Dhabi sometime on Sunday. Of course that is an eight hour jump forward in time giving people just three full days to adjust before the media events on Thursday in the Emirati State.
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Vegas a triple header for 2024
Next year, the following weekend will take place in Qatar before the tradition curtain falls again in Abu Dhabi.
Of course the drivers and teams are used to switching time zones and one of the tricks they use in Singapore to mitigate the huge shift is to remain on European time – regardless of what the clocks say in the city state. Yet this only works due to the fact they are moving forward in time and the race is a nighttime event.
Las Vegas is the latest time zone Formula One visits and creates its own set of problems particularly when the teams then are forced to bounced forward by 12 hours for the final races next season in the middle east.
One solution would be to declare the Las Vegas event the season finale though a number of issues complicate this. The new extended calendar which has a four week break between Singapore 22 September and Austin 20 October would require this gap filling to ensure F1 is in Sin City the weekend before Thanksgiving.
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The sport could drop its commitment to host the race on this particular weekend but would suffer the loss of some $20m in a premium paid by Abu Dhabi to be the final race of each year.
Las Vegas embraced Formula One in a way many other events cannot. Fans could walk back to their Hotels whereas in Austin and Miami its a tortuous gridlock of cars travelling the 20 or so miles to return to their accommodation each evening.
Further, TJ13’s man who attended the race in Austin this year, said it felt inside the city as though F1 didn’t even exist. Vegas was the extreme opposite with F1 being celebrated everywhere on menu’s and in associated special events put on for the test of thousands of fans in town.
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Ricciardo against triple header
Daniel Riciardo is firmly against what the sport is planning for the end of 2024 with the proposed triple header.
“That does not get my vote, now knowing that, they need to bring [the Las Vegas schedule] forward, because we’ll be wrecked,” he added.
Merely adjusting the schedule in Vegas by a couple of hours will not make a significant difference to the drivers and it is entirely plausible the ‘race along the strip’ could become the F1 season finale in just a few seasons time.
After all the idea was first mooted by none other than Sergio Perez, who ironically may not make it that far next year.
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With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
