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Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix 2023 - Results
OK, I'll admit it. I didn't think Las Vegas was going to be that exciting. I was proven wrong. What a race!
But F1 still owes me money for the Thursday night FP1/FP2 debacle!!
Anyway, the final race of the season is at Abu Dhabi, Nov. 24-26. Which is already next weekend! Didn't even realize we had a double-header.
Race Results -- SPOILER
| POS | NO | DRIVER | CAR | LAPS | TIME/RETIRED | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Max Verstappen | RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT | 50 | 1:29:08.289 | 25 |
| 2 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | FERRARI | 50 | +2.070s | 18 |
| 3 | 11 | Sergio Perez | RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT | 50 | +2.241s | 15 |
| 4 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | ALPINE RENAULT | 50 | +18.665s | 12 |
| 5 | 18 | Lance Stroll | ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES | 50 | +20.067s | 10 |
| 6 | 55 | Carlos Sainz | FERRARI | 50 | +20.834s | 8 |
| 7 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | MERCEDES | 50 | +21.755s | 6 |
| 8 | 63 | George Russell | MERCEDES | 50 | +23.091s | 4 |
| 9 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES | 50 | +25.964s | 2 |
| 10 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | MCLAREN MERCEDES | 50 | +29.496s | 2 |
| 11 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | ALPINE RENAULT | 50 | +34.270s | 0 |
| 12 | 23 | Alexander Albon | WILLIAMS MERCEDES | 50 | +43.398s | 0 |
| 13 | 20 | Kevin Magnussen | HAAS FERRARI | 50 | +44.825s | 0 |
| 14 | 3 | Daniel Ricciardo | ALPHATAURI HONDA RBPT | 50 | +48.525s | 0 |
| 15 | 24 | Zhou Guanyu | ALFA ROMEO FERRARI | 50 | +50.162s | 0 |
| 16 | 2 | Logan Sargeant | WILLIAMS MERCEDES | 50 | +50.882s | 0 |
| 17 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | ALFA ROMEO FERRARI | 50 | +85.350s | 0 |
| 18 | 22 | Yuki Tsunoda | ALPHATAURI HONDA RBPT | 46 | DNF | 0 |
| 19 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | HAAS FERRARI | 45 | DNF | 0 |
| NC | 4 | Lando Norris | MCLAREN MERCEDES | 2 | DNF | 0 |
Fastest Lap: Oscar Piastri
Source: F1.com
i thought Hamilton was being his usual supportive self, but he was right about this circuit.
For next year, I’m hoping they move it to earlier in the night and also bring F2 in to lay some rubber.
The track did end up providing some great racing, and hopefully this "unknown factor" wasn't the only thing that led to it so that next year's race will continue being good. The whole organization around the event though was a mess. Next year should be a bit smoother though, with less disruptions and the organizers being better prepared for issues on the track.
I really hope they make it right with the Thursday ticketholders. $200 for merch is bullshit.
It was good of them to add 50m to the DRS zone, too. But yeah, they really need to get their shit together for next year. This will be a good highlight for the season -- and really, if they can get the after-race stuff more streamlined, it might make for a good season finale.
Is it only US races that have had these bizarre disjointed post-race procedures? I vaguely remember drivers being driven around inside a stadium in Miami (?), and it was just as awkward as this race's tedious drive to what looked like a helipad in the middle of nowhere. The cool-down room and the podium celebrations work because there is still the post-adrenaline haze of the race, I think. The room where the athletes can grab a drink and exchange a few words with each other before receiving their prizes, the podium where relief and jubilance battle exhaustion on their races – that's a spectacle, that's interesting. By breaking it up with trolling around in cars, you lose all of that tension and the whole thing feels a bit deflated.
yeah, they definitely need the cool down room. They should also mic it up properly so we don't have to lean in only to go deaf with Crofty cutting in.
I don't know why they want to change so much. The format for almost every other week is perfect.
Ha, you've experienced Crofty or Lazenby cutting in when you've cranked the volume to 100 too, then? The chats in that room can be fascinating though. Sometimes they can be a little anti-climactic, but it's nice to see a relatively unfiltered view of the drivers. Just like the pre-race safety briefings. There was no way they could feasibly be broadcast publicly, you need a "safe space" where the drivers and safety team can speak freely, but my goodness, was it ever interesting.
I was disappointed when I heard that there would be no cooldown room in Vegas, but the cooldown car was a fun thing to see live! Same sort of idea with a much different atmosphere, but yeah the post-race procedure was a mess for Vegas.
at least they didn't bring in James Cordon for Cool Down Karaoke.
Was going to post the thread this weekend but didn't have time to. Thought of you, @jcphoenix when you said last weekend that you had tickets for FP1/2. Were you there? Did you get kicked out? What was it like? Must've sucked.
But yeah, the racing was actually pretty incredible which surprised me. Alonso spinning out first turn was painful as an Alonso fan but kind of funny seeing two cars parked looking at each other. After those turn 1 incidents, you basically had 4 top-team cars in the last positions.
Man, had: 1. Sainz not gotten the unfair penalty, 2. That SC not happened, then maybe Leclerc would've gotten this one. Disappointing to see Max P1 again but hey, he raced and he got it, so it is what it is. Hopefully next year is more of the same racing, less of the same shitshow.
Yup, I was there on Thursday in the Sphere area. Our seats were around T5 (doxing myself, confirmed).
After FP1 was red-flagged and cancelled, we hung around drinking and eating (all the food was free and pretty good) and dancing (Mark Ronson and Kylie Minogue were awesome), expecting FP2 at midnight. But around midnight, when the music was done, it was announced that FP2 was delayed til 2:00a or 2:30a, and food services were ending.
So we decided to head into the nearby Venetian to get some coffee and warm up. At that point, it was getting cold sitting/standing around doing nothing. We scanned-out properly with our tickets. We were initially told we couldn't back in after 12:45a, but then some staffer came by to tell the gate staff that to ignore that and let people in after 12:45a.
I nodded off in a coffee shop in the Venetian, even with a coffee! Around 1:45a we were ready to go back to the stands, but then we noticed lots of people streaming away from the Sphere bridge, along with lots of F1 Guest Services people in red coats. We asked one of the Guest Services people who kindly explained that FP2 was closed to fans, everyone was getting kicked out, even the workers, due to some kind of labor regulation. So I personally didn't get kicked out; I just wasn't allowed to re-enter. That was disappointing, to say the least.
Afterwards, we had to figure out how to get to an Uber pick up area, because the one we were initially dropped off at was on the other side of the now closed Sphere fan zone. That was an adventure on its own. Saw lots of other confused and lost fans dealing with that, too. We had to get out of the "inside" of the track zone to be able to find a valid Uber pick-up area on the outside of the track. We ended up crossing over Las Vegas Blvd to Treasure Island, close to T12, to use their Uber stand. By that point, it was 2:30a and FP2 started. So we at least were "rewarded" with the incredible sound of the cars going flat-out on the Strip. But we could barely see anything, since most of the sidewalk fences were covered-up. Luckily, security was pretty lenient and letting people watch and listen from the sidewalks (think people would've rioted otherwise).
We didn't stay for the whole thing; getting back home around 3:30a. Think the roads were scheduled to reopen around 5am? Didn't even know the Strip was planned to be open for normal traffic during the day. Thought that was unusual.
So yeah, that was my first F1 experience. $1000 total for 4 tickets. $300 for my flight to Vegas. $100 total for Uber RT. And probably another $100 for beers. So about $1500 for 7min of FP1. 🙄
Well, glad to hear you weren't one of the ones waiting for hours in the cold for FP2. Still sucks paying that much money only to get 9 minutes of running though... and damn, those photos and videos you shared make me wish I could go to an F1 race sometime... I lived the first 14 years of my life in Abu Dhabi and never realized they ran F1 races in Yas Island... Hopefully I'll get the opportunity to do so sometime soon!
As crappy as that experience was, I can still say I was at the inaugural F1 Las Vegas Strip Circuit and got to experience some of it live. Lots don't get any of that experience, and just hearing the cars in-person...it's just wow. You definitely need to check out a race one of these days!
Since my folks live here (I'm still in Vegas), I'll probably come back again in the future. Ideally, the kinks will have been worked out by then. Even if it's not Vegas, I'd love to go to another F1 race. Spa would be great before it maybe gets pulled from the calendar.
But honestly, I'm thinking my next race will be an Indycar race. Way cheaper and the racing is just as good; sometimes even better. I'm thinking Grand Prix of Monterey at Laguna Seca. I think 3-day tickets are only $200.
I don't keep up with Indycar, but here in my small northern city in Portugal, they used to host the now defunct WTCR every year and this year they hosted 6 hours of different car categories. It was wild seeing those cars, classic cars, random cars, fast cars, slow cars going at the speeds they were going. Motorsport is just so insanely enjoyable no matter what the type of car is. I can imagine F1 is much more exhilerating just due to it being F1 and the speeds those cars go at, etc. etc. but I'm sure you'll enjoy Indycar too.
Ahh, maybe I can save up some money for the Hungary race next year! It tends to be one of the cheaper races of the calendar...
The 2nd half of this season's races for me are mostly hoping for Max to have equipment failure or some other issue that pushes him back because there's a lot of competition for second.
There were multiple times in Vegas when I thought he might not win:
But nope he's just a machine and won anyway.
Fun race though.
He really is a racing machine, isn't he? He's just sort of relentless, Pérez had a decent race, had a bit of luck, and STILL Verstappen can just cruise up and go past. IMO, Verstappen did the right* thing by establishing himself in the sport from the beginning as a racer who will run you off or will crash into you if you don't yield. That reputation has saved him a lot of trouble - I think he pushed it hard in the twilight years of Hamilton's dominance, and then when he needed it to win a tight battle, he didn't need to change his behaviour.
*Caveat - I don't like this style of driving, but unfortunately the arsehole strategy is a winning strategy. So it's "right" in the sense that it gets you more points.
Indeed I too had low expectations but was pleasantly surprised. I guess the low levels of grip had something to do with the exciting race.
Even when Leclerc is on point, the car has pace and good deg, and Ferrari doesn’t bottle the strategy, he gets unlucky with safety car timings. Hell, Verstappen getting hit ended up helping VERSTAPPEN the most.
Top notch race. A shame that that quali result and that straight line speed led to both Williams out of points. Shout outs to Ocon and Stroll, carved their way up the field really impressively.
Leclerc may have won if Sainz wasn't penalized for the manhole cover thing and was nearer the front.
Seems like more beard = more performance. If Stroll goes full beard, he may become unstoppable!
Kidding, but still, truly impressive from him, especially considering how messy Alonso's race was. And Williams... disappointing considering that fantastic quali result.
Just watched the replay: really good race! Shame the Leclerc's car took a while to turn those tires on, because there could have been a battle between Max and Charles there.