Las Vegas Grand Prix

"A difficult evening""A difficult evening"

It was a tough Saturday night in Las Vegas for the team, with Fernando finishing the Grand Prix in P13 and Lance forced to retire on the opening lap. Post-race, Fernando was promoted to P11 after the two McLaren cars were disqualified for technical non-conformity.

Read on for all the reaction trackside following the chequered flag.

A chaotic first corner unfortunately saw Lance hit by Gabriel Bortoleto. The damage he picked up was significant and ended his race.
Fernando also sustained damage in the early stages but was able to continue, though the performance of his car was hampered.
After showing decent pace in the wet during Qualifying, the dry conditions for the race were not favourable, and Fernando, despite his and the team's best efforts, could not hold onto a points-paying position.
The team executed a one-stop strategy with Fernando, switching from Medium tyres to Hard, and pulled off an undercut on Oliver Bearman, though the Haas driver would overtake during the second stint.
Also on the track earlier in the day, Tina Hausmann finished P8 in Race Two of the F1 ACADEMY weekend, securing points in her final outing in the series.
Full focus is now on Qatar next weekend as the season-ending triple-header continues.

THE LATEST FROM THE TRACK

Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas

Don't let the dazzle distract; the Las Vegas Grand Prix is anything but superficial: this is a real racing challenge. The grip is low, the speeds are high. If the Hungaroring is Monaco without the walls, the Las Vegas Strip Circuit is Monza with added walls. Temperatures will be as low as we get outside of a European winter test, and the track has some unique challenges that we don't see anywhere else. It's all very exciting, which will keep the adrenaline pumping as we work into the small hours of the morning.

Following a tough week in Brazil, with only Fernando's three F1 Sprint points to show for it, the team comes into this final triple-header locked in a battle, with just 20 points separating sixth from ninth in the Constructors' Championship table. Across two continents and three very different circuits, there's everything to play for.

Meanwhile, after a seven-week gap, F1 ACADEMY is back in action this weekend for its final brace of races. Tina Hausmann sits eighth in the standings following a tough trip to Singapore, but two races on the Las Vegas Strip give her the opportunity to end the season on a high.

For everything you need to know about the Grand Prix in the City of Lights, keep scrolling.

TRACK INSIGHTS

Las Vegas Street CircuitLas Vegas Street Circuit

Las Vegas is incredible in a Formula One car, driving past at 300km/h. All the lights go by so quickly.

Jak Crawford – Aston Martin Aramco Young Driver

Toggle below to highlight parts of the track.

Sectors
Turns
DRS

Circuit length (km)
6.201
Number of corners
17
Race distance (km)
309.958

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It's not difficult to locate entertaining diversions in Las Vegas. It is, after all, why the city exists… but don't be suckered into thinking the only options are heading to the Strip for a fat steak, a wander around the fashion outlets and the opportunity to be parted from your money at the roulette table. If you have a couple of hours free, the city has some fabulous museums related to its past, including the Neon Museum, the Mob Museum, and – just a couple of blocks from the paddock – the excellent National Atomic Testing Museum.

For anyone wanting to get out of town, Las Vegas is a popular base camp for trips out to The Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and Death Valley. But you don't have to go that far out of town to get back to nature. Just a couple of miles beyond suburban Las Vegas there's the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, which is a stunning place to spend an afternoon.

Alternatively, if your interests are more human- than geo-centric, the Lake Mead National Recreation Area is out to the East of the city, offering plenty of opportunities for boating and watersports, while the reason Lake Mead exists is also worth a tour – The Hoover Dam is staggering in scale. Alternatively, keep heading South-East and eventually you'll cut the historic Route 66 at Kingman, Arizona. There isn't much left of the old route to the west – but the record shops are great.

Mastering Las Vegas Street Circuit

It used to be that street circuits in F1 were low-speed, high-downforce things, replete with intricate chicanes and 90° corners. That's changed now, with first Baku and now Las Vegas being pared-back drag race circuits of incredibly high speeds. For Vegas, where cars hit 350km/h last year through the speed trap, that means going for a Monza-style low-drag set-up. Indeed, were it not for the presence of the Las Vegas Street Circuit, lurking at the end of the season, it's possible teams wouldn't go to the expense of building a Monza package at all – but the presence of the long back straight down the Las Vegas Strip demands it.

While the first and third sectors are dominated by straights, the middle part of the track (the section that goes around The Sphere) is rather more intricate. It's here that lap-time is to be gained or lost, and it's very, very difficult. Last year, Pirelli measured Las Vegas as the lowest-grip circuit on the calendar and, with track temperatures likely to be very low, we often see drivers fighting with their cars. This is particularly true in Qualifying, when drivers were tending to do the rarely seen warm-up lap before a timed lap, to get some heat into the compound.

The circuit also features some very heavy braking zones, which will be a tricky proposition given the low ambient temperatures. More akin to the sort of set-up dilemmas we'd expect to see at a winter test, the brakes will be configured to retain heat, rather than dissipate it.

The magic of racing in Vegas

With the possible exception of Monaco, The Las Vegas Grand Prix is the most 'street' race of the street races, with the track threading its way around the part of town familiar to tourists, and thus there really isn't much of a separation between time at the race and time downtown, as there would be in – for instance – Montréal: step out of a hotel; you're at the track; step-out of a grandstand, you're at a restaurant, and so on.

Spectator areas are clustered around the Eastern side of the track, with one zone encompassing the start-finish straight and opening corner complex (The East Harmon zone), and another around the Sphere. The East Harmon complex is on top of the interactive fan zone, and also hosts the stage where Shaggy and Dillon Francis will be headlining, in between personal appearances from the drivers.

The Sphere zone features a lot of entertainment options but also perhaps provides a better view of the F1 cars, as they go through a section that's a little slower and set up like a stadium. There's also general admission space here, and it's well worth a visit for a session, even if your tickets are elsewhere – plus the Sphere itself delivers a live feed of everything that's happening around the track.

One thing to note. Take a coat! Every other night race F1 hosts takes place in conditions where mild evening conditions are a welcome respite from the heat of the day. Vegas in November, when the sun goes down, is cold!

Strategy insights from the Strip

We have the same tyres in Vegas as last year, and there's a not unreasonable chance the race this year will proceed along similar lines. The top nine finishers last year all ran the same Medium-Hard-Hard strategy, with 10th-placed Sergio Pérez swapping that around a little to run Hard-Medium-Hard. The first round of pit stops began early, on lap nine, with the rest of the race being broken up into two equal hard stints.

Fernando was the only driver to start the race on a Soft tyre. The only other cars to use a Soft were Lando Norris, who had a sufficient gap to pit at the end of the race, and grab the point for fastest lap, and Esteban Ocon, who also pitted for the Soft at the very end of the race.

The only driver to do a one-stop was Kevin Magnussen, who finished 12th with a Medium-Hard race after a pitstop on lap 17 of the 50-lap race. This is interesting because Pirelli's sims suggested this was the fastest way to complete the race. The one-stop did, however, require very careful management to avoid the sort of graining that could ruin a race, and the pace at the start of the race worked against that. Could the one-stop be back on the table this year? Yes. The 2025 tyres have been designed specifically to be less prone to graining and so, before a wheel has turned, it is certainly an option.

Ultimate Las Vegas Grand Prix facts

1 | Lance finished fifth in the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix in 2023, avoiding all of the first lap incidents and gaining 10 places on the opening lap, the most by any Aston Martin driver since the marque returned to F1 in 2021.

2 | The Las Vegas Strip Circuit is the second-longest circuit on the F1 calendar, and the longest street circuit at 6.201km, 27 metres longer than the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.

3 | This is the third Las Vegas Grand Prix but, somewhat confusingly, the fifth F1 race to be held in Las Vegas. F1 came to town in 1981 and 1982 for the Caesars Palace Grand Prix, held in the parking lot of the famous Hotel/Casino, just to the West of the current T14-16 chicane.

4 | The race is a rare Saturday event. When the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix was held in 2023, it was the first time F1 had raced on a Saturday since the 1985 South African Grand Prix. Both Caesars Palace Grands Prix were also Saturday events. We've since had the 2024 Bahrain and Saudi Grands Prix moved to Saturday to better accommodate Ramadan. The practice of holding an F1 race on a Saturday was more common at the start of the World Championship era. Indeed, the first race, the 1950 British Grand Prix, was a Saturday race.

5 | The Las Vegas Grand Prix is our third visit to the United States this year, following the Miami Grand Prix in May and last month's United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas. The US first hosted three races in 1982, when Caesar's Palace in September was the last of the triptych which began with the US Grand Prix West at Long Beach in April, followed by the Detroit Grand Prix in June. Italy is the only other country to host World Championship rounds three times in the same season. In 2020, during global pandemic, F1 visited Monza, Imola and Mugello.

5 | Despite being in a city with reasons to look up everywhere, it is the Sphere that draws the eye from every direction. The 54,000m2 external LED screens – aka the Exosphere – contain 1.23 million round LEDs, and does not broadcast the colours yellow, red or blue during track sessions, lest it distract the drivers by replicating the warning colours used by the trackside light panel signalling systems.

Last time out in Vegas

We had a good Las Vegas debut in 2023 and a disappointing follow-up last year. The slightly chaotic 2023 weekend had limited running on Thursday night, with FP1 red-flagged after a drain cover came up, leading to the novel situation of FP2 being delayed until 04:00. Fernando eventually lined-up P9 and Lance P19.

Chaos at the start on the cold track had a number of collisions and a spin for Fernando, who pitted at the end of the lap. Lance, however, made up 10 places, to end the first lap in P9. He also made a stop on lap three, to get rid of the Soft tyres, running two Hard stints to climb to P5 at the flag. Fernando, shed the Medium tyres at the end of lap one, also did two long, Hard stints, climbing to P9 by the flag. Double points finish at the debut of the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Both drivers struggled with the low grip and graining in 2024, with Fernando lining up P16, with Lance right behind him in P18. Fernando went aggressive, starting on the Soft tyre and pitting at the end of lap four, for clean air and two long Hard tyre stints. It very nearly worked, but he ran out of tyres in the last few laps to finish P11. Lance had a very lonely race after losing the radio on the first lap. As a result, he lost around 20 seconds in a confused pit-stop and never recovered, finishing P15.

Session Times

FP1

Fri21NOV

00:30-01:30 GMT

FP2

Fri21NOV

04:00-05:00 GMT

FP3

Sat22NOV

00:30-01:30 GMT

Quali

Sat22NOV

04:00-05:00 GMT

Race

Sun23NOV

04:00 GMT

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"A difficult evening""A difficult evening"

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"A difficult evening""A difficult evening"

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TRACK INSIGHTS

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"There's only one place to be this weekend"

A beginner's guide to F1 ACADEMY

Jessica and Tina on being women in the driver's seat

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