2023 Heineken Las Vegas Grand Prix Race Recap،
LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Formula One’s $500 million bet on the Las Vegas Grand Prix looked like a blowout victory in the wee hours of Friday morning as a ridiculous course of events culminated in 90 minutes action on track in front of empty stands.
The opening practice session, which began on Thursday evening at 8:30 p.m., lasted just eight minutes after a drain cover came loose and caused serious damage to the underside of Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari.
Major repairs to the circuit, which included work on several manhole covers around the circuit, meant that the midnight start time for the second practice session came and went with no certainty that further action on the track would take place.
Before 1am, the FIA confirmed that a second extended 90-minute session would start at 2am, but it was then postponed until 2.30am as work on the circuit continued late into the night.
At 1:30 a.m., after four and a half hours of waiting in cold temperatures, remaining fans were asked to leave the circuit because labor laws prevented security guards from monitoring fan areas.
The hospitality units above the pit straight, where weekend passes were sold for $50,000 before the event, were also emptied, with the lights turned off by the time the session began.
What followed was the bizarre spectacle of 20 Formula 1 cars racing around an empty city in the middle of the night, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc setting the fastest time ahead of teammate Sainz and Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin during the a relatively uneventful session.
Second practice finished at 4 a.m. and circuit organizers immediately got to work reopening sections of the circuit to public traffic.
Damage to Sainz’s car in the first session meant the chassis and power unit had to be replaced, with F1’s stewards refusing Ferrari’s request to overturn the resulting grid penalty.
Team principal Fred Vasseur called the incident with the drain cover “unacceptable” and said the damage to the car would cost Ferrari “a fortune”.
The chassis of Esteban Ocon’s Alpine was also damaged beyond repair after hitting the drain cover which had been torn apart by Sainz’s Ferrari.
It remains to be seen whether the reputation of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, which had already been damaged before the weekend due to falling ticket and hotel prices, can be restored over the next two days, when qualifying and the race.
Speaking after the first practice session, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff defended the circuit.
“It’s nothing, it’s Thursday evening, we have a free practice session that we’re not doing, but they’re going to seal the pipe covers and no one will talk about it tomorrow morning,” he said. declared.
Unlike other events on the racing schedule, Formula 1 is the promoter of the Las Vegas Grand Prix and has spent more than $500 million in preparation, including the purchase of a $240 million plot of land near of the famous Strip on which it built the stand and the paddock. complex on.
