LAS VEGAS – The second edition of the Las Vegas Grand Prix has officially come and gone. It’s been about 36 hours since drivers crossed the finish line as I write this, so having had some time to digest I can appropriately give a worthy post-mortem.
After being one of the many pioneers of the now infamous escalator hack at last year's Grand Prix, I opted to watch the race from my apartment this time around. Honestly, I’m glad I did. Not just because of the exorbitant prices and the chilly weather but also because it allowed me to take in the race as the made-for-TV event that it was truly designed to be.
Something I learned quickly last year is that the live-viewing experience isn’t exactly ideal for trying to take in the race. It’s certainly a spectacle to see the finest racecars on the planet zoom by you at 210+ MPH but it’s also nearly impossible to follow. Attending a Formula 1 Grand Prix, especially one of the most expensive on the 24-round calendar, is knowing that the race really comes secondary to the festival-like atmosphere.
This time I got to fully appreciate the spectacle that this wonderful city puts on, largely in the same way the rest of the world did. I have to tell you, the visuals were as stunning as the last few months of construction and upheaval has been inconvenient. The way the race was presented by Sky Sports made it feel like it was the most important race of the season. Not just because a champion was likely to be crowned, but because being in Vegas means something.
Something else Formula 1 presumably learned on Saturday night (or Sunday morning) was that crowning your champion in Vegas means something too. In February, it was Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs who had their Vegas moment in the Super Bowl. This coming April, it will likely be Cody Rhodes or even The Rock at Wrestlemania.
As Saturday night wound into Sunday morning, it was Max Verstappen who had his championship moment under the lights in Sin City. The Dutchman etched his name into motor sports immortality by clinching his fourth straight World Drivers’ Championship with a fifth-place finish.
It’s starting to feel like earning your crowning achievement under the Vegas lights is becoming a right of passage for this generation’s most iconic athletes.
That would certainly be welcome news to Steve Hill and the LVCVA, who are reportedly seeking a deal with F1 that would extend the Grand Prix’s lease on the strip for years to come. For struggling business owners on Flamingo and Koval who have barely been able to keep their doors open through two editions of the race, that development will likely cost them their livelihood.
So, the question shifts to a somewhat uncomfortable one. Is saving a handful of businesses worth passing up the opportunity to further establish what could become an internationally renowned sporting event? Well, the hotel executives and the LVCVA have made their answer to that clear.
At this point, it’s hard to blame them. When you look at the way the city was presented by a sport that has the largest per-event viewership on the planet, it’s not hard to see where they are going to get a return on their investment. The right thing for the LVCVA and F1 to do at this point would be to give businesses like Jay’s Market on the corner of Flamingo and Koval a check worth enough to make up lost revenue, close their doors and open up shop somewhere else. The likelihood of that? Slim to none.
As great as the race looked on Saturday night, there was almost unanimous disapproval from locals about its return even this year. The aforementioned reasons make it hard to believe that will change in any meaningful way in the near future. The next decade of F1 in Vegas is certain to cause PR headaches for both them and the LVCVA, but moments like crowning Verstappen as a four-time champion in Vegas will always be deemed as being worth the headache.
Us locals, as much as I hate to say it, might just need to embrace this. No city cares more about branding than Vegas does, thanks to our reliance on the tourism industry. I mean, even the phrase “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” was the brainchild of a 2003 LVCVA ad campaign. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt just this one time. Don’t make me regret it.