‘Slightly f***ed’: The key Vegas problem F1 can’t ignore… even if it’s perfect for Aussies

There are so many metrics by which the success of the Las Vegas Grand Prix was measured for the race’s second running this weekend, but one stood far above the others.

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Las Vegas Grand Prix 1. Water valve covers 0.

After the inaugural race last year was derailed by an iron disc being sucked out of the road and obliterating Carlos Sainz’s in the first 10 minutes of track action, the overwhelming priority in 2024 was that the weekend should go off without a hitch.

At the second time of asking, Formula 1 executed a flawless round, with Las Vegas finding its groove.

The race has quickly established itself as one of F1’s tentpole events not just in the United States but globally.

It’s arguably F1’s most important race commercially as a deal making hub, while the branding value of having F1 cars run down the Strip — a logistics achievement that should not be understated — is akin to the same for racing on the iconic streets of Monte Carlo.

And having proven that the event can be pulled off in principle, Formula 1 felt much less of a need to turn the weekend into an all-singing, all-dancing spectacular that Max Verstappen described as “99 per cent show and 1 per cent sporting event” last year.

While it’s still one of the busiest races off the track, the additional workload demanded of teams and drivers to help launch the race in 2023 has been dispensed with.

Perhaps helped by the fact the title was set to be decided at the weekend and undoubtedly boosted by the quality of racing last year, the on-track action was allowed to take centre stage.

“I think it’s been a step forward compared to last year,” Carlos Sainz said. “I feel like last year F1, if anything, was trying a bit too hard to put on too much of a show. It got a bit too much away from Formula 1 and too much into Vegas style.

“This year we’ve just been just more normal doing our own thing, and it’s been a success.

“It just shows the Formula 1 product works and you don’t need to try too hard.”

But the grand prix coming and going without a hitch is only part of the story and by no means signifies the Las Vegas Grand Prix has achieved its final form.

While this year’s event wasn’t plagued by stories of underwhelming ticket sales, as was last year’s race, two of three days failed to sell out, with only the Saturday race taking place in front of a full house.

And that could be directly related to the number one gripe about the antepenultimate race that so far Formula 1 appears unable or unwilling to address.

SCHEDULING REMAINS MAJOR ISSUE

Las Vegas’s 10:00pm starting time is unique and bizarre, being far later than any other night race on the calendar.

Last year race organisers pushed the boat out by setting qualifying up at midnight. The water valve debacle had FP2 get underway at a farcical 2:30am.

While all the key sessions — FP2, qualifying and the race — were set at 10:00pm this year, it did little to ameliorate the enormous mental strain on the human beings who put on the show.

“I will go to sleep at 4:00am, wake up at 12:00pm, so as late as possible, basically, because if not, the day becomes so long that you arrive to the night very tired,” Sainz said after qualifying, describing his approach to the unusual hours.

“I’ve been changing my sleeping routine one hour more or less every day that I spend here. I managed to go to sleep an hour later, wake up an hour later, and [on Saturday] I’ll try and wake up at 1:00pm.

“You do breakfast, lunch and dinner according to that timetable, so my breakfast is at 2:00pm, lunch is at 7:00pm, dinner is in an hour or two [after 11:00pm].

“I want to keep everything as a normal weekend, getting the same amount of hours of sleep, and then keeping myself the same time until the important session of the week.”

With the sun setting at around 4:30pm, Lewis Hamilton said the lack of sunshine “really messes with your rhythm”, while teammate George Russell admitted he took naps during the night to stay fresh.

“It’s also just trying to sleep when you can,” he said after taking pole. “So I took a nap before qualifying. I woke up a little bit drowsy and then made sure I was in peak condition come the end of qualifying.

“It’s really difficult, but we’re all in the same boat. I went to sleep because the body’s just all over the place.

“I’m just trying to sleep when I can and just listen to my body, and if I need to sleep, sleep.”

The situation is far worse, however, for the thousands of people who work in Formula 1 who don’t have the luxury of taking naps during what is effectively the working day.

Mechanics are tasked with almost perpetual work, so much so that F1 long ago instituted a curfew to ensure they got time away from the track.

Hospitality workers, race officials, administrators, media — all other classes of worker must soldier on despite their bodies screaming for sleep.

“I’d bring the race a couple hours earlier if I could,” Sainz said. “I think it would help everyone in the paddock, everyone that does the job in this sport.

“I think it would put everyone in a healthier, better mood through the weekend.”

While next year’s race timings haven’t been released, there’s no clear sign F1 will budge on the schedule.

Last year Las Vegas CEO Renee Wilm argued that the late starting hour was part of the city’s brand as a global entertainment capital despite it massively reducing viewership on the US east coat, where the race gets underway at 1:00am.

She also said the starting time was made as late as possible for European audiences, where lights went out at 7:00am.

“If we went earlier, at 20:00, you’re just foreclosing the European market,” she said in 2023. “We did not think that that would be the right thing to do for those legacy fans.”

There are also logistics reasons for running the race so late, with the schedule allowing the city roads to open to public traffic for most of the day.

Local media reported that the roads used as part of the circuit — including Las Vegas Boulevard — were open until 3:00pm on the three days of track action, two of which are weekdays. An earlier start time would bring forward the closure times, worsening congestion on key arterial roads.

Given every street race is controversial among a city’s populace, it’s not surprising the schedule in these early years would be designed to minimise disruption in the hope of winning over local opinion.

Perhaps after several years the event will be so smoothly run and so loved by locals that the time can be shifted, but that remains to be seen considering the other arguments the race mounts in defence of its bizarre hours.

CALENDAR POSITION REMAINS BIGGEST GRIPE

But it’s not simply the race’s own internal scheduling that’s causing problems. Arguably worse is Las Vegas sitting as the first of a triple-header of races to end the season, as it will be next season too.

From the US west coast the sport will travel more than 13,000 kilometres to Doha for the penultimate round of the season this weekend.

It’s the longest flight route of the year, almost double the distance of the Mexico–Brazil and Azerbaijan–Singapore double-headers.

If you could travel directly, it’d be an almost 15-hour flight, but at least one connection is required, blowing out the journey to at least 19 hours.

There’s then an 11-hour time difference between Las Vegas (GMT-8) and Doha (GMT+3), but that happens in parallel with the body clock shifting 10 hours in race time — the Las Vegas Grand Prix started at 6:00am GMT, while the Qatar Grand Prix will start at 4:00pm GMT.

And while the races are separated by a week, the events are split by far less.

There will be only five days and six hours between Russell taking the chequered flag in Vegas and the start of first practice in Lusail.

Now consider that F1 must be set up and ready to go on Wednesday in Qatar. Taking into account the pack-down time in Vegas, that leaves only around three days to transit halfway around the world.

Russell, whose status as a director of Grand Prix Drivers Association gives his voice extra weight, said that while he recognised there were some genuine reasons to hold the race late, Vegas’s inclusion in the triple-header was inappropriate.

“Obviously it’s not great timing at all for the people who are here in the moment,” he said. “But we’re 20 drivers [and] let’s say 4000 people who do all the F1 races collectively, and there’s tens of millions of people who watch at home.

“I’d probably say having it back-to-back with Qatar is the biggest challenge. If we have a week off afterwards, I’d say that’s probably the only thing realistically that would help.”

Hamilton said the mechanics who did most of the physical labour felt the strain of schlepping the circuit from Las Vegas to Qatar in around 96 hours particularly acutely.

“For sure the back-to-back is not the easiest,” he said after the race. “It’s massively challenging for everyone here and particularly for the people that work in the garages that are on their feet taking the car to pieces now, packing it up and shipping it over.

“They won’t get a lot of rest, so for them it’s definitely the hardest.”

The same was the case last year, when Las Vegas led directly to the season finale in Abu Dhabi, except in 2024 there are two races remaining, keeping F1 on the road for an extra seven days of exhaustion.

Christian Horner described the mental state of the paddock as “slightly f***ed” this time last year.

We’ll wait and see what it’s like in around two weeks.

COULD A SPRINT HELP TICKET SALES?

One other important question that must be asked about the race’s schedule is the effect it had on ticket sales and fan attendance.

Race day Saturday boasted a full house, but neither Thursday not Friday sold out, with the first two practice sessions getting underway with dishearteningly sparse crowds in the grandstand, giving the event a flat atmosphere.

F1 reported a weekend attendance of 306,000 people, a decline of 9000 people on last year’s crowd.

Various explanations have been made for the unsold seats. Aside from the exorbitant ticket prices, the most compelling reason is that sitting outdoors in a 10°C chill at 10:00pm on a Thursday night watching a non-competitive practice session simply doesn’t appeal, regardless of whether you’re a longstanding fan of the sport.

With the race not budging from its place on the calendar — the date was chosen because the week before the national thanksgiving holiday is historically one of Las Vegas’s quietest — this might be a further argument to adjust the session timings.

But given that too seems unlikely, why not make Las Vegas a sprint weekend?

The track has proven over two seasons that the layout is conducive to overtaking, and with teams now loaded up with data on how to set up for this circuit, there’s no obvious greater risk to adding a short race to the schedule.

The appeal would be that more competitive sessions could bump ticket sales on Thursday and particularly Friday by guaranteeing fans real action.

Organisers played down the chance of adopting the sprint format, however, citing the difficulty of running a race in Las Vegas as a limiting factor ahead of the weekend.

“I don’t think people understand the complexity of this race versus other street races,” F1 chief operating officer Emily Prazer said, per Autosport.

“I think adding a sprint would also create a nervousness of, ‘Can we fix the track if something was to happen fast enough?’.”

She also suggested that race’s high average speed — which is still slower than the Italian Grand Prix in Monza — meant there would be little difference between the sprint and the race.

But perhaps the more persuasive argument is a financial one.

In an interview with then Canadian Grand Prix CEO François Dumontier, Le Journal de Montréal reported that Formula 1 charges around US$4 million (A$6.1 million) per sprint race.

Given Formula 1 itself promotes and runs the Las Vegas Grand Prix, it can’t charge itself an additional fee for the sprint. In fact it would cost the sport money — with sprints currently capped at six per year, it would have to take a short race away from a fee-paying promoter to run it at Las Vegas for free.

Additional ticket sales — and they’re not exactly diabolic at the moment anyway — might not make up for the lost revenue, even if it would benefit the overall spectacle.

The second running of the Las Vegas was an undoubted success. The track generates good racing, the teams and drivers have found their rhythm and the event itself has found a groove.

But there’s still room for improvement for what F1 intends to be the race that sets the bar for all others. The route Formula 1 chooses to progress the race will be fascinating to watch.