It started and ended with a bang.
The first was the sound of an iron water valve cover blowing a hole in Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari and plunging the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix into turmoil.
The second was the fireworks display that lit up the Vegas neon skyline on Saturday night after one of the season’s best races.
Formula 1 wasted no breath hyping up its billion-dollar Las Vegas gamble in the weeks leading up to the star-studded street race.
Watch every practice, qualifying and race of the 2023 FIA Formula One World Championship live and ad-break free in racing on Kayo Sports. Join now and start streaming instantly >
Having made it to the other side a little bruised but ultimately unbowed, did F1’s so-called new standard live up to that hype, and what does it mean for the direction of the sport?
THE GOOD: A RACE THAT DELIVERED REAL ACTION
You can guarantee F1 management was breathing a long, 90-minute sigh of relief after the lights went out and the race delivered a little bit of everything.
It featured plenty of overtaking — 82 passes, to be precise, the most of any dry-weather race this season.
The circuit and conditions clearly challenged the drivers, as evidenced by the first-corner mistakes and Lando Norris’s monumental high-speed error that send him hard into the barriers — thankfully unhurt.
And it featured a genuine battle for the lead, with pole-getter Charles Leclerc looking good to convert until the mid-race safety car put Verstappen back on a victory trajectory.
“It was one of the best races,” Lewis Hamilton said after starting 10th, dropping to 18th and recovering to seventh. “So many people, all the media, everyone has been so negative about this race and about the show and all that.
“I was [like], ‘Just let it be and let’s see how it goes’. Great race. This is like Baku but better.”
Hamilton’s praise wasn’t surprising given he was among the race’s biggest boosters.
But even Verstappen was willing to give the race some credit despite having panned the event for most of the weekend.
“I always expected it to be a good race,” he said.
“Today was fun. That’s the only thing I want to say about it; I think today was fun. I hope everyone enjoyed it.”
PIT TALK PODCAST: A chaotic, late-night and litigious build-up to the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix delivered one of the season’s best races, but was it enough to save F1’s most hyped event and earn it a permanent place on the calendar?
It was clear to the Dutchman why Las Vegas worked as a circuit.
“I think low [degradation] on the hard tyre, a lot of slipstreaming of course with the long straights, and probably a bit of a headwind maybe on the straight as well,” he said. “When you’re following you don’t really lose that much time, because [the corners] are that slow.
“And then there’s a lot of drafting around the track … so that made the racing much better.”
Long straights leading to big braking zones is the easy fallback in F1 circuit design to almost guarantee overtaking, at least with DRS.
The slippery surface also added the spectacle despite the drivers almost unanimously complaining about its lack of grip. Combined with chilly overnight temperatures, the track gave drivers less feedback through the cold tyres and forced more mistakes. We saw plenty of passing thanks to varying levels of confidence in the big braking zones.
But there’s also one key factor that made this race great: drivers out of position.
Verstappen dropped to 10th early in the race. Sergio Pérez was 18th at the end of the second lap with Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz. Hamilton had his turn at the back of the pack. Having cars out of their natural pace position always generates racing as they attempt to fight their way forwards.
That perhaps serves as a small asterisk on the grand prix. The race probably still would’ve been good without those cars attempting to recover, but perhaps it wouldn’t have been as memorable.
Chaotic start shakes up Vegas GP! | 00:44
THE BAD: F1 FUMBLES ITS FIRST RACE IN CHARGE
Despite the event’s general success, Formula 1 can’t simply brush off its disastrous first day as a simple rookie error.
It’s not just about the iron water valve cover that burst from the ground and obliterated the rear end of Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari. That was undoubtedly embarrassing, coming less than 10 minutes into the most hyped event in Formula 1 history, but it’s happened at other more storied tracks.
It was the way Formula 1 dealt with the format that risked leaving a lasting stain on the event.
There was a lack of communication as the local engineers checked and secured every drain cover around the track for faults, a mission that lasted around five hours.
The sport was understandably determined to not call off second practice, but that meant running FP2 at the ridiculous time of 2:30am until 4am.
But it was only around an hour before cars rolled out of pit lane that the sport realised its security and other staff were at their maximum shift lengths. The realisation struck too late to do anything about it, so fans were ejected from the circuit by police, having seen a grand total of around eight minutes of track action after paying eye-watering prices for admission.
The event issued three separate statements in the following 12 hours. None of them apologised to put-out fans.
One of them — a joint missive from F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali and chief race organiser Renee Wilm — appeared to suggest condescendingly that only “those who are new to racing” could have taken issue to the handling of the situation.
P1 abandoned after heavy track issues | 03:11
Eventually fans with Thursday-only tickets were offered vouchers to the Las Vegas Grand Prix shop, though they reportedly had to pay shipping and state taxes out of pocket. Fans who had three-day tickets were offered nothing but the promise of smoother running on Friday and Saturday.
The entire fiasco is now the subject of a class action in the Nevada courts.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix was the first event Formula 1 organised itself, as opposed to the usual model of a local promoter setting up the race, paying a sanctioning fee and attempting to make its money back through ticket sales.
The sport’s throughline was that Las Vegas would ‘raise the standard’ for other events. Undoubtedly in some cases that was at least roughly true. F1 spared no expense in creating a spectacle and atmosphere for its showpiece race.
But there were clear and sometimes silly missteps, ranging from improperly managing the rostering of security staff to not setting up lighting for the vast asphalt paddock in this all-night race.
Liberty Media is undoubtedly an excellent manager of F1 as a racing category, which has come leaps and bounds since it took over in 2017.
But it will reflect after this weekend that managing a round of the world championship isn’t as easy as it looks.
LANDO NORRIS CRASHES OUT! | 00:52
THE UGLY: NIGHT-TIME SCHEDULE IS UNTENABLE
With a bit of humility, Formula 1 will grow stronger for those mistakes and present a much tighter event in the coming years as it targets long-term profitability for its Las Vegas race.
But one thing that absolutely must change immediately is the scheduling of the race.
Not the drivers nor the teams nor the media nor the punters were satisfied with the outlandish session times, which saw practice scheduled at 8:30pm, qualifying at midnight and the race at 10pm.
The rationale for the hours was that it would allow Europeans to get up and watch the grid-setting hour at 9am and the race at 7am. It also allowed public roads to reopen in daylight hours.
But the trade-off was the health and wellbeing of the paddock.
The sport had just completed a tiring triple-header in the Americas ending in Brazil (GMT-3), flown 11 hours home for around a week (GMT for the UK, GMT+1 for Europe) and then flown 11 hours to Las Vegas (GMT-8).
But the night-time scheduling meant the paddock was actually operating on Japan time (GMT+9, or effectively GMT-15).
If it sounds confusing, it should.
Brundle explains ‘weird’ F1 Vegas vibe | 01:53
This wasn’t like other night races. The Singapore Grand Prix, for example, takes place at 8pm, which corresponds with 2pm in Europe, meaning the entire paddock stays on European time to avoid the jet lag. The sun sets less than an hour before the race, which helps the body adjust.
But that strategy couldn’t work in Las Vegas.
If you were working in the paddock, you were seeing the sun for an hour or two after getting up and then returning home at sunrise. In practice most people were operating on five hours sleep at most, with body clocks shattered by the hectic end to the season.
“Everybody is leaving Vegas slightly f***ed,” Christian Horner summed, per ESPN. “It has been a brutal weekend for everyone behind the scenes, and I think we need to look at how we can improve that for the future.”
Daniel Ricciardo said he felt the sting by the end of the weekend.
“I feel like I’ve been — or probably all of us have been — a little bit delirious and a little bit hallucinogenic,” he said, per The Race.
Worse is that this weekend the sport is travelling to Abu Dhabi. It’s around a 15-hour flight direct and a 12-hour time zone change on paper, but in terms of race time it’s more like a 19-hour shift accounting for eastwards travel.
Worse still is that next year the sport will fly to Qatar and then Abu Dhabi in a cursed triple-header.
“That does not have my vote,” Ricciardo said. “They need to bring it forward, because we will be wrecked, especially at the end of the season.”
If Formula 1 is committed to being a global sport, trying to constantly satisfy the European time zone must be considered an anachronism, if not just for the health and wellbeing of its travelling circus.
Shaq brushes Brundle in Vegas grid walk | 01:16
WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE LAS VEGAS?
The inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix was on balance a success. Formula 1 raised its profile with a big branding victory, albeit with plenty of room for improvement.
But it’s also fair to say the weekend didn’t — and it never could, let’s be honest — live up to the sometimes frankly silly levels of hype that at one stage had the sport suggesting this might be the greatest show on earth.
It’s also important to remember to divide the show from the sport when considering how important or central Las Vegas might become to F1’s identity.
Formula 1 clearly wants to make more races off-track spectaculars. While most races aren’t going to set up opening ceremonies or hire Cirque du Soleil to perform on the grid, it’s clear the other 23-plus grands prix per season will need to be more than just races.
In that way Las Vegas really does raise the bar.
On track, however, it will take more than just one good race — predicated on long straights and big braking zones — to earn Las Vegas the kind of prestige that will make it synonymous with Formula 1 racing.
Take, for example, idle editorialising about Las Vegas superseding Monaco as the premier street race and knocking it off the calendar.
Racing in Monte Carlo might be increasingly dire, but there’s nowhere better to watch a car in qualifying trim — and arguably no greater driving challenge. That has value.
Meanwhile, while F1 has permission to run down the Las Vegas Strip for a decade, Spa-Francorchamps labours under rolling one-year contracts and is expected to be the first to cop a rotating deal with another European venue to make room for more races elsewhere, probably on city streets.
Arguing the defence for the F1 history, reigning champion Max Verstappen gets the final word.
“Of course a kind of show element is important,” he said. “But I like emotion.
“When I was a little kid, it was the emotion of the sport that I fell in love with, and not the show of the sport around it.
“When you go to Spa, Monza — these kinds of places have a lot of emotion and passion, and seeing the fans there is incredible.
“Of course I understand that fans need maybe something to do as well around the track, but I think it’s more important that you actually make them understand what we do as a sport, because most of them just come to have a party, drink, see a DJ play or a performance act.
“I can do that all over the world. I can go to Ibiza and get completely shit-faced and have a good time.
“And they become fan of what? They want to see maybe their favourite artists and have a few drinks with their mates and then go out and have a crazy night out, but they don’t actually understand what we’re doing or what we’re putting on the line to perform.”
Verstappen’s Vegas concerns laid bare | 02:37
Love him or loathe him, Verstappen is a pure racer at heart. He’s been fascinating to watch mature into his role as a leader in the sport, and his words should carry serious weight.
“If you would actually invest more time into the actual sport, what we’re actually trying to achieve here … if the sport would put more focus onto these kinds of things and also explain more what the team is doing throughout the season, what they are achieving, what they’re working for — these kinds of things I find way more important to look at than just having all these random shows all over the place,” he said.
“It’s not what I’m very passionate about, and I like passion and emotion with these kinds of places.
“I love Vegas, but not to drive an F1 car. I love to go out, have a few drinks, throw everything on red or whatever, be a bit crazy, have nice food.
“But the emotion, passion is not there compared to some old-school tracks.”
Not every race has to be run to the same formula. There must always be room for a mix of driving challenges, and Las Vegas warrants a place in that mix.
It’s likely Vegas will become F1’s tentpole race in the United States and the Americas. Its branding and marketing value is enormous, and on that count too it deserves a place in the schedule.
But it has a way to go yet before it gets a piece of Formula 1’s soul.