The Grand Prix of Las Vegas opens the third series of three consecutive stages this year. Each of them influenced the course of the season in their own way. After the first summer series, Red Bull unexpectedly stopped winning, in the second McLaren and Ferrari took the lead in the Constructors’ Championship and the third will determine the championship results.
The end of the season this year is interesting. The winners have not yet been determined; the entire platoon continues to fight for positions. The modification of the cars has long been completed, but the teams are actively testing solutions for the next season, when the regulations will hardly change, with the readiness to immediately switch to 2026, when this becomes possible.
To win the title early in Vegas, Max Verstappen only needs to finish ahead of Lando Norris. Red Bull has already printed victory jerseys and T-shirts, McLaren has prepared to celebrate victory in the Constructors’ Championship, which the Lights last won in 1998. Ferrari will do everything they can to make life difficult for them, but in three weeks everything will be decided.
In Vegas, all events of the race weekend will be shifted one day and will take place at night under artificial lighting, but due to the difference in time zones in Moscow, the schedule will be more similar to Japan – all sessions will be held early in the morning at the usual to dawn. According to local time, practice takes place on Thursday, qualifying on Friday and the race on Saturday, but for us it starts on Sunday morning.
Formally, the race in Vegas will be the 75th in history, which will not be held on Sunday according to local time.
Forty years ago, stages in the parking lot of the Caesars Palace hotel in Las Vegas closed the season. At the time, no one liked the hilly temporary course fenced off with concrete blocks. Now everything should have been perfect, but last year the stage started with a scandal. The first practice lasted less than ten minutes – several cars were seriously damaged by crashing into the open hatch of the drainage system, and Ocon and Sainz even had to replace the chassis.
The start of the second training was postponed by two hours so that all thirty drainage wells could be checked. Spectators who paid a lot of money were forced to leave the stands because the security guards were finishing their shift and they could not work outside office hours due to the union’s conditions.
The empty stands, which were almost completely filled during the first training, were not visible in the broadcast of the second session. The first pancake came out lumpy.
Today the race in Las Vegas is an important stage of the season for Liberty Media. A high-speed urban circuit in one of the most famous cities in the world embodies the trends of modern Formula 1.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix does not have a separate promoter; Liberty Media organizes the stage through its own structures and invests enormous sums of money in the hope of even greater profits. Where else are there million dollar tickets? Maybe in Miami, but after appearing on the Las Vegas calendar, he lost his previous status.
Unlike recent races in Austin, Mexico City and Sao Paulo, where there was nowhere to fall in the stands, the sport in Vegas is secondary. There are also plenty of spectators in the stands, but for the time being it is the same casual crowd as in Singapore. This weekend has no sporting history of its own.
She will appear when the title is played this week and the winner will be crowned in Vegas. Liberty Media is counting on this a lot, but we all want to stretch the intrigue until the final laps of the last race.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
