Formula 1 Las Vegas: Heineken Silver Las Vegas Grand Prix 2023
The biggest, baddest, and fastest motorsport in the world returns to Las Vegas with the Las Vegas Grand Prix, bringing the excitement of nighttime Formula 1 Racing to the Entertainment Capital of the World. The highest class of international racing for open-wheel, single-seater formula racing cars in the world, Formula 1 Racing began in Monaco in 1950, and has toured world-class cities around the globe ever since. The only other place F1 racing in the United States has occurred is Texas, and the only other time it happened in Nevada was 1982. This time, the cars will rip around a street course that includes a stretch down the one and only Las Vegas Strip—at night.
Engines roaring, hearts pounding, adrenaline racing—nobody does motorsports like Nevada, and from November 16-18, 2023, our auto racing scene is about to get a whole lot louder. For the first time since 1982, Formula 1 returns to Las Vegas, bringing hundreds of thousands of spectators from across the globe to experience F1 racing through the Entertainment Capital of the World.
What Is Formula 1 Vegas?
One of the most popular sports in the world with 430 million fans (by comparison, the NFL has 410 million fans worldwide), Formula 1 effortlessly combines the discipline of highly advanced automobile engineering with the unpredictable thrills of street racing. In Formula 1, drivers routinely exceed 210 mph as they careen through chicanes, hairpin turns and straightways in open-wheel race cars that look a lot more like speculative NASA projects than your uncle’s favorite NASCAR rig.
Serving as the 14th race on the Formula 1 Grand Prix Championship calendar, the Las Vegas Grand Prix comes near the end of the season with just seven races left on the schedule, meaning there’s a better-than-fair chance this could be the race that decides the world championship. Current drivers such as Lewis Hamilton, Charles LeClerc, Max Verstappen, George Russell, Fernando Alonso, Mick Schumacher, and many others are all slated to return to the grid, offering American spectators a rare opportunity to see the world’s fastest drivers in action.
What to Expect at a Las Vegas Formula 1 Race
Daytime Formula 1 races are pulse-pounding enough on their own, but take all that and drop it into a nighttime neon setting on the Las Vegas Strip and you’ve got something extra special. Formula 1 racing hasn’t been on Las Vegas’s radar since the early ‘80s when Caesars Palace hosted a Grand Prix event, but this time, instead of a closed circuit, the racers will power through the streets starting at 10:00 PM PST, with brightly-lit casinos and the cityscape serving as a dramatic backdrop.
During the Formula 1 Las Vegas race, the drivers will traverse 50 laps, each 3.8 miles (6.1 km) long. Along the way, they will encounter 14 turns and three straightaways, where they will top 210 mph. Similar to American Indycar, Formula 1 differs from NASCAR and other stock car racing in that the cars are open-wheeled, the drivers much closer to the ground, and the tracks are generally street circuits rather than ovals. Tire and fuel management along with stops in the pit and paddock are a crucial part of the overall strategy to win at this exciting form of racing.
And it’s not all about the race. As Formula 1 fans know, the atmosphere plays a large part in the sport. For that, race organizers are creating a year-round, 36-acre “Formula 1 Experience” that allows fans to get up close and personal with the cars, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the team effort that goes into such a race.
