Au revoir Monaco, Formula One has a new spiritual home. What could be more apposite in a city of illusory gratification and fool’s gold than a Las Vegas Grand Prix in November with the drivers contesting a championship already decided on a low-grip circuit with dodgy drain covers in temperatures colder than Norway? But hey, it’s Vegas, baby!
At some point F1 will have to address the un-competitive turn taken by a sport sold as the greatest show on earth. But not here. Not this weekend. F1’s return to the Mojave Desert 41 years after its prior attempt to colonise the American frontier is aimed at a high-rolling audience more interested in being at the races than racing. That’s for petrolheads.
This is a place to be seen, to rub shoulders with their royal highnesses David Beckham and Kylie Minogue and their neon associates, paid-for, power people hired to create a sense of occasion. When was the last time a race kicked off with an opening ceremony? There is a party for every night of the week, each loaded with the exquisite allure of adult-only titillation. Even the drain cover drama that wrote off FP1 was very Vegas, taking out a Ferrari first.
The Vegas pageant is insane and bold, but not for everybody. Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff had never been to Las Vegas. You sense he would rather spend a night at Everest base camp in his pyjamas than spend one under lights on the Strip. He hates gambling and, channelling his inner Presbyterian minister, issued a blanket ban on Mercedes staff, including drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, playing the tables.
Coming here is an ambitious $500m (£400m) roll of the dice that shifts the sport further into the entertainment space where market growth is to be had. Wolff is not against novelty, and goodness knows in a season stripped of interest by the dominance of Red Bull, any diversion is welcome.
“I think we are there more for the show than the racing itself, if you look at the layout of the track,” he said. “I’m actually not that into it. I’m more like, I’ll go there and do my thing and be gone again.”
Max Verstappen would appear to agree with his unvarnished view that the race is “99 percent show, one percent racing…I like to be in Vegas but not so much for racing. I’m looking forward to doing the best I can but not looking forward to this show.”
It would please some in the town if F1 had never come at all.
Some residents have voiced their unease at the disruption caused by the weeks-long infrastructure intrusion, including the erecting of stands along the Las Vegas Boulevard and other parts of the circuit, which manifests in wearisome traffic jams. Even regal rock ’n’ rollers U2 have been forced to suspend their residency at the funky Sphere for three weeks because the circuit wraps around the venue.
Hamilton, a six-time winner in the United States, welcomed the city’s embrace of F1 whilst also sympathising with the populace.
“We’ve got to make sure people are taken care of. We can’t be a circus that shows up, that’s all glitz and glamour, and people are affected negatively by it, in my opinion.”
There have also been negative takes, too, on ticket costs with some packages charging upwards of $3,000 (around £2,400). And much has been made of the late discounting of hotel prices and re-sale tickets, suggestive of an enterprise pitched wrongly.
Whilst the pricing is high, the experience promises to deliver for its target market, and each ticket is all-you-can-eat-and-drink inclusive. The discounting of both tickets and hotels is standard practice in Vegas. Liberty are still expecting 100,000 through the doors each day, which does not feel like failure.
And then there is the impact on the racing itself of running late at night in plunging temperatures to accommodate European television audiences, who will consume Sunday’s race live at 6am in the UK and 7am on the Continent.
Pirelli’s motorsport manager Mario Isola is anticipating a line of drivers moaning at his door over tyre management at 10 Centigrade. “It is a step into the unknown for everybody. Las Vegas will be cold, it’s a street circuit. So they will complain,” he said.
“Fast track, long straights, high speed, and all in conditions that are quite difficult to manage. Obviously, we cannot change the weather, we cannot increase the temperature. A challenge could be to keep the temperature in the tyre. That’s why we decided to select the three softest compounds.”
F1 owners Liberty Media deliberately targeted Las Vegas to further mine an American market driven by the success of Drive To Survive, the Netflix documentary that triggered an explosion of behind-the-scenes content across the sporting canon. A city predicated on hedonism draws together the threads connecting F1 to a developing audience high on celebrity. It also provides copious places to stay, things to do, and best of all, high-net-worth engagement.
In early 2021 Liberty’s chief legal and administrative officer Renee Wilm approached the big stakeholders in Las Vegas, the casinos and hotels, plus civic bodies, to explore hosting a race. The east coast of America was covered in a deal with Miami. Austin was already established as a keynote race in the central standard time zone. The gap was way out west. Twelve months after those exploratory meetings a deal was agreed for 2023.
For their part, and for the first time under their ownership, Liberty have picked up all the promotional costs of hosting a grand prix, a privilege for which state-backed races in the Middle East shell out north of $50m (£40m) a race – as well as purchased land to construct a permanent pit and paddock complex a few blocks away from the main boulevard. Wilm estimates a boost to the local economy of $1.2bn (£1bn).
“That is inclusive of all the personnel that we have engaged as well as all the revenue that will be generated by our local partners, and then obviously the tax revenue that is being generated for the benefit of the state of Nevada as well as the Clark County,” Wilm said.
“I think our partners, including MGM, Wynn, Caesars, are very excited about bringing their level of Ultra VIP Entertainment and hospitality to the F1 fan base.”
Whilst a grand prix in this land of make-believe and Elvis worship might be seen as an epic folly, complete with a pop-up wedding chapel in the paddock, it is at the same time part of a programme of serious wealth generation for a sport seeking to gain a more permanent foothold in the United States.
The growth of American sponsorships in the paddock is significant. Tech and software companies looking to build brand through a tech-driven sport, Oracle, Google, Dell and Salesforce, have poured in millions.
Financial and consumer services companies like MoneyGram and banks are also plugged into the Netflix vibe. McLaren CEO Zak Brown explained to the CNBC news network how the name Goldman Sachs ended up on his cars.
“Well, I went to CEO David Solomon and I asked him what he was looking for and turns out he’s looking for experiences for his high-net-worth clients that money can’t buy.” Boom.
The influx of American automotive interest has, however, caused friction in the paddock. General Motors have registered their intention to supply engines in support of the application to join the grid of its premier sports marque Cadillac.
Whilst F1’s ruling body, the FIA, has given its sanction, the teams have the final say and since an 11th team would dilute the distribution of prize money each receives, there is significant resistance to the move. A bond of $200m dollars to be shared by the teams to ease their pain is on the table but might need enhancing to gain the necessary approval.
Life’s a deal in this part of the world. It is in this context that we must see the place of Las Vegas on the grand prix calendar, a product amplifier and mechanism for driving the business of F1 as much as promoting the racing of cars. If Monaco distilled the essence of old, pre-Liberty F1, Las Vegas is the beating heart of this new, all-singing, all-dancing vision.