Perez into 3rd.

Scratch that. Couldn’t hold it for one lap.

Alonso-Perez must be one of the battles of the year. In an otherwise boring race

Max probably should stop winning his super license fees for next year getting insane

exactly. Real snore fest til that last battle

Super snore fest. Actually fell asleep around lap 30.

Don’t watch American racing, is it more exciting? Those are driving around in an oval constantly too right?

Vegas will be interesting, probably tons of pre race hype but might fall flat come race night.

I used to like NASCAR a lot in the early 2000s. There were still tons of great drivers and personalities, but all of them have moved on and the new breed seems boring.

They've also gone full r***** on the changes to make racing more "exciting". There are so many cautions now to bunch up the field that you might as well not tune in until 10 to go.

IRL, or whatever it's called now might be the best bet, but I could never get into it.

Will F1 Be Worth It For Las Vegas?

I'll just say what a difference downforce and closeness in times between the field makes that we need wide open and long straights to produce good racing these day.

1982 was not 'good racing'. It was bloody awful. 26 qualifiers, 2 of which didn't even start. Only 13 finished. 10 mechanical retirements. Only two cars finished within a minute of the winner.

That's what I'm saying that there was such a margin between the cars that this allowed overtaking/interesting racing back then (putting aside reliability which of course has also contributed to the dullness of the current racing - i.e. no last minute engine blow ups for the leaders etc.). All the passing done these days is artificial due to the DRS zones because the cars have just so much damn downforce on them that it makes it nearly impossible to follow them and pass them without assistance.

There was such a large margin because some cars had turbos and some were normally aspirated. It was like having 2 separate formulas in one race.

Anyway I'm sure the Las Vegas public will still love it

A little like the 2 year crossover in tennis between standard sized wooden racquets and the oversized graphite ones in the early 80s

they are showing practice laps on ESPN2 right now if anyone cares.

Short lived FP1

RIP

any local who regularly drives on these roads knew this was going to happen.

Drain covers are an issue on every street track and there have been 2 big incidents before in Baku and Montreal and minor ones in Singapore and Melbourne. Interesting is that it looks like the concrete failed while the welding stayed intact which makes fixing this and preventing this for all the other drain covers is going to be very difficult. Pretty sure FP2 is not happening.

I am probably naïve, but I feel bad for the organizers.
From Max sht’ing on them yesterday and the nightmare today, it looks like the whole event might’ve been too big and they did not rehearse enough.

Everyone and their mother is crapping on them online, from the circus of huge opening ceremony, locals being inconvenienced for many months and some small business around the construction area losing a lot of business.

What started out as a fun inaugural event has turned into a huge headache. Since the race will be here for years to come, perhaps they should build a track away from the strip in the future.
Visually, it won’t be as nice but at least a lot of concerns and complaints will be avoided.

Can’t imagine they don’t changed the ridiculous decision on Sainz’s grid penalty. Horrible ruling

Of all the street races, would any come close to the level and length of disruption to locals that Las Vegas has?

I have to LOL at the relative minimal disruption that is caused in my home town, Melbourne, but some here would still say it’s an inconvenience.

Since living here in Macau on/off for a couple decades. Locals are used to the disruption, the Grand Prix event lasts for a couple weeks too lol. Driving, bus routes etc… all get altered.

Of course the 1st year in Vegas is a mega event and production. They will surely learn tons and next year will be much better……hopefully

I heartily LOLUSA is in order

Imagine spending mirrions of dorrars on the bombastic shows, have celebrities all over the place and then a ****ing manhole opens up in the circuit.

Racing should be done on racing circuits.

I’m only now catching up on watching FP1 and FP2. This has been a disaster so far, even if we ignore the weeks of disruption for locals, especially strip employees. The drain cover is one issue, but compounded by Ferrari being penalised 10 places because of stupid inflexible regulations. No wonder. Vasseur struggled to bite his tongue.

Racing at 2:30am, sending the paying public home because they don’t have enough staff. Hopefully everyone takes heed in future years and doesn’t waste their time or money visiting the city or attending the race.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some drivers would have been happy to have had an excuse to skip this race.

It’s clear that many people have been paid and instructed to only be positive about the track, its preparation and the event as a whole.

FP2 finishes at 4am local time in front of no crowd.

An utter joke.

No one wants to be out there until 4am. People would be lucky to get to sleep by 6am.