Max Verstappen has slammed the Las Vegas Grand Prix as being too focused on entertainment at the expense of the sport after a chaotic first day in the Strip Circuit paddock.
Formula 1 took control of its brand-new Las Vegas Strip Circuit on Wednesday night (Thursday afternoon AEDT) ahead of a high-stakes first race in the Nevada city in more than 40 years.
Parent company Liberty Media will have invested around $1 billion in setting up its showpiece event by the end of the weekend.
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Its commitment to generating a spectacle was showcased by its opening ceremony on Wednesday night. The half-hour show comprised 11 high-profile musical artists, including Kylie Minogue, Journey and DJ Tiesto, as well as Cirque du Soleil and the Blue Man Group, arranged on a series of motorised temporary stages.
The show also featured a drone light display and a large fireworks display.
The drivers were introduced to the moderately populated main grandstand at the end of the 30-minute prelude, rising through a set of giant platforms with their teammates, waving to the crowd and then descending again a few seconds later to make way for the next pair.
It was just one event in a jam-packed off-track schedule for the drivers, for whom Las Vegas will be their busiest weekend of sponsor and media commitments.
Several drivers even had to rearrange their Wednesday schedules at the last minute after being requested to attend a red-carpet event at a casino elsewhere in the city before returning to complete preparation for the first day of practice at the brand-new circuit.
The workload is compounded by the strange time zone being kept by the paddock, with the working day not ending until the early hours of the following morning.
It’s all to the distaste of reigning world champion Verstappen, who said he wasn’t a fan of the way F1 had returned to Las Vegas.
“99 per cent show and 1 per cent sporting event,” he said derisively, per Racer. “I just always want to focus on the performance side of things, I don’t like all the things around it anyway.
“I know of course in some places that is part of it, but let’s just say it’s not in my interest.
“There is no problem, but it’s just not really my thing.”
Verstappen was particularly unimpressed with being put on display at the end of the opening ceremony.
“We are just standing up there looking like a clown,” he said.
But the Dutchman acknowledged that Formula 1 had legitimate business interests in pumping up the event, which the sport hopes to turn into one of its most profitable rounds by the end of its contract.
“I fully understand,” he said. “You can look at it two ways: business side or sport side. Of course I understand their side as well. I’m voicing my opinion on the performance side of things.
“We [drivers] are not a stakeholder, so we just go with it. They decide what they do, right? I would do the same if I was the owner, I wouldn’t listen to the drivers. It’s my sport, I would do with it what I want if that would be the case.
“If someone wants to go in this direction, you want a lot more show attached to the program, then I guess we have to deal with that — as long as everything goes well they can say everything is working well. Let’s see how long fans also like this.”
But he did take aim at the decision-makers for aligning Las Vegas back-to-back with next weekend’s season-closing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
The scheduling will force a rapid 12-hour time-zone shift, though that doesn’t take into account the unusual hours being kept on account of the Las Vegas race start time being at 10pm.
With jet lag an unusually prevalent point of discussion in the paddock, Verstappen said the sport had created a needless complication for staff.
“I don’t really get that,” he said. “That is very tiring, also at the end of the season that we have to do this, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense.”
Some drivers took a more sympathetic view to the Las Vegas spectacular, with Lewis Hamilton urging his peers to see the benefit of having the sport grow in the United States.
“I hear there’s a lot of people complaining about the direction that Stefano [Domenicali, F1 CEO] and Liberty have been going. but I think they’ve been doing an amazing job. This sport is growing massively.
“The sport continues to grow. It is a business ultimately, and I think you’ll still see good racing here.
“It’s just such a big country. I think to really tap into the market here and really captivate the audience here, I think we needed to have at least two races. The one wasn’t enough.
“This is one of the most iconic cities there is … all the lights, the show — it is a big show for sure.
“Everybody I know in Hollywood is coming, there’s a lot of high-net-worth people coming, there’s going to be a lot of business going on this weekend and hopefully a good spectacle for people to watch.”
But the seven-time champion warned that it was important to bring people with the sport, particularly when it puts on events as big and disruptive as the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
PIT PASS PODCAST: This weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix is the most eagerly anticipated race of the season — and perhaps the most hyped in F1 history. Can the race possibly live up to expectations, and what sort of grand prix can we expect down the famous Las Vegas Strip?
Local media have aired grievances from locals inconvenienced by the disruption to their day-to-day routines in the lead-up to the first race as sections of the city closed for F1-related construction. Hamilton said leaving a positive impact on cities and people would be important to the sport’s continued growth.
“We’ve just got to think about the impact that we have in these different places,” he said. “It’s not just a circus that comes here and then we leave.
“I know there’s been lots of complaints with how it’s interrupted people’s daily lives, but hopefully it’s just short term. Maybe in future we’ll be able to do things better so people aren’t affected as much.
“We should look at how we can positively impact the community here and particularly like the kids.
“In Austin I brought 60 young girls to the circuit from local communities that never would have the opportunity to go to the track. Hopefully now they’re inspired to be engineers and have gone back to their school and told all their friends.
“I’m really proud of my team that we just had 15 kids from local communities come in today from underprivileged schools to see the garage, and again, that’s stuff that we need to be doing more of. I think every team and the sport should be doing more of that stuff.”
Though he was optimistic for a good race, Hamilton’s review of the high-speed street track was lukewarm at best.
“Maybe the track will be good, maybe it’ll be bad,” he said. “It was so-so on the sim. It’s definitely not Silverstone.
“I think don’t knock it until you try it.”
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