Las Vegas Grand Prix, Or Fyre Festival 2.0
Explore the exhilarating parallels between the Las Vegas Grand Prix and the infamous Fyre Festival in our latest deep-dive. Discover how F1's Vegas debut, shadowed by initial setbacks, emerged triumphantly, potentially setting a new standard for world sporting events.
Signs from the universe. No matter what you think or believe sometimes there are just things that happen way too coincidentally for it not to mean anything. That is exactly what I have seen so far between both the Las Vegas Formula 1 Grand Prix, and the ill-fated Fyre Festival of 2017.
It’s early 2017 and both Formula 1 and the Fyre Festival are front and centre. Formula 1 has just been purchased by US media firm Liberty Media, and promotion for a new ultra-luxurious and exclusive music festival called Fyre Festival is in full swing. Formula 1 arrives in Melbourne for the start of the 2017 season and the drivers are asked by a journalist “What would you like to see from the new owners?”. Daniel Ricciardo quickly answers “A race in Vegas!”, and Lewis Hamilton then answers “A race in Miami”.
What does this have to do with the Fyre Festival? Well just a few weeks after the Australian Grand Prix of 2017 the Fyre Festival absolutely flops, ultimately sending its founder to jail for fraud. The promise of luxury accommodation and gourmet catering turns into mattresses on the floor of flooded tents and sliced cheese on bread for lunch. To rub further salt into the wounds of those who showed up, none of the artists ever performed or even made it to the festival grounds.
Now here we are in 2023 and while the wishes of Ricciardo and Hamilton have come true, Formula 1 is facing its own similar issues and criticisms this weekend after a disastrous Thursday at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Although all of this quickly recovered into one of the more entertaining Grand Prix of the year, earning great reviews from the fans who attended. Despite all this, the event does have a cloud hanging over it in the form of a class action lawsuit filed over its handling of Thursday practice.
How can F1 ensure the thousands that turned up on Thursday don’t feel like they’ve just attended Fyre Festival 2.0, and what can it do to build this event into its greatest event? Let us dive into a few points where it went wrong, and how those weak points can actually be strengths for the future.
WHAT HAPPENED ON THURSDAY IN LAS VEGAS?
In case you missed out on what happened here is a quick recap. At about 9 minutes into practice, one Esteban Ocon ran over and dislodged a drain cover on the track, which was then completely ripped out by Carlos Sainz as he also ran over it. Both driver’s cars sustained damage but Sainz’s Ferrari was destroyed beyond repair as the drain cover punctured a hole in the floor of the car. The cause was the failure of a concrete housing that was keeping the cover in the ground. This very well could have happened due to the extreme suction that the cars create underneath them, which is actually what gives them the grip to drive as fast as they do.
This indecent then triggered the FIA to inspect all of the drain covers on the circuit, and abandon the first practice session as a result. The repair works and inspections being carried out then delayed the second practice session until 2 am, over two hours past its original start time. The fans hanging around to get their money’s worth of F1 action were then surprised to learn that they were no longer welcome in the stands and fan areas. The event organisers weren’t planning on needing staff to run the fan areas for that long so by the time the practice session was underway, all of the fans had to be escorted away.
Due to the already long hours these jobs entail along with the amount of staff required, it was just not possible to accommodate the fans as hundreds of replacement staff just aren’t available on such short notice.
REALITIES OF A MOTORSPORT EVENT
Motorsports events are unique when compared to other major sporting events as the sheer scale of these events is on another level to most other events. The land alone required for Formula 1 events is around 10-15 times greater than even the biggest football stadiums in the world. This means that there are a lot of moving parts, all of which need to be functioning optimally for the event to run smoothly, or even at all. If just one Marshall doesn’t show up, or if one piece of the track has an issue then the whole event can grind to a halt.
On Thursday in Las Vegas, this is exactly what we saw when one small drain cover brought the whole event to a standstill. While this is unusual it is unfortunately something that can happen at almost any race track. Sometimes even the best efforts to test track parts can come up short as there are few things in the world that can truly replicate the stress put on a track by a Formula 1 car. This mishap will definitely prompt those at the FIA and Formula 1 to review and adjust their systems, but that doesn’t mean that circumstances like this won’t present themselves in the future.
FIRST RACE EVER PROMOTED BY FORMULA 1
There have been over 1000 F1 Grand Prix events take place but last weekend they were in uncharted territory as the Las Vegas GP marks the first event that Formula 1 has promoted themselves. Traditionally an external promoter will be in charge of organising the event and they’ll also have to pay a large fee to Formula 1 for the privilege to do so. The promoters are usually in charge of all the costs associated with setting up the venue for Formula 1, along with all the associated work. The promoter will then collect the money from ticket sales to help recoup the costs, along with some sponsorship and often government grants.
Like Miami, Las Vegas is an absolute juggernaut in the tourism and entertainment world. Because of this both of these cities don’t particularly need an event like Formula 1 to put them on the map and in the minds of tourists around the world. The top brass at Formula 1 in London realised this and decided to take it upon themselves to put on this event, which means that they not only have to organise every last detail but also foot the bill for all of it. The trade-off is that they control absolutely everything from the track layout to the placement of the food stalls for fans, an enormous challenge for a company that has actually never done this.
WHAT WAS EVERYONE ACTUALLY UPSET WITH IN LAS VEGAS
The reality of what happened on Thursday in Las Vegas is something that could happen to any motorsport event in the world. It has already happened to Formula 1 in the past, and it may not be the last time it happens. I believe that many fans of Formula 1 and motorsport in general are aware that situations like this are a real possibility on any given race weekend. I also believe that they were not angry at what happened, but rather at how they were treated. This is especially the case for those who decided to wait around for hours to see their favourite cars and drivers make history by driving down Las Vegas Boulevard.
In the end, they were offered a $200 voucher as compensation for seeing just nine minutes of track action, but that doesn’t quite make up for the fact that they didn’t get to see what they paid for. Also, it is worth pointing out that there were no support categories present at the event, so those in attendance couldn’t even enjoy some other motorsport categories to help relieve the pain of not seeing their beloved Formula 1 cars.
WHY ALL OF THESE POINTS ARE ACTUALLY POSITIVE
While all of these points can sound like there are many downsides to the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the event was an overall success for Formula 1. There is definitely room for improvement and some of the event’s issues can actually be turned into strengths in the future.
For starters, the failing of the track gives both Formula 1 and the FIA a chance to upgrade their pre-event checks and systems to be even more thorough and stringent than ever. This will ensure situations like this are less likely to occur in the future, further boosting the safety credentials of both organisations and the wider motorsport community.
The humongous scale of this event and its success now has the potential for F1 to be viewed not only as the pinnacle of motorsport, but the pinnacle of world sporting events. It’s extremely tricky to pull off an event like this for any organisation, but being their first event promotion and organisation makes this even more impressive. With plenty of room to grow, I’m excited to see how it evolves over the coming years. This is also great news for the wider motorsports industry as extra attention on F1 will also mean extra attention on motorsports as a whole, giving everyone in the industry an added boost.
Correlation isn’t causation and I think that the slightly intertwined storylines of the Vegas Grand Prix and Fyre Festival will remain just as a funny coincidence. While the Fyre Festival will fade as a distant memory (if it already hasn’t), I see the Las Vegas Grand Prix becoming not only a landmark event for Formula 1, but the pinnacle of world sporting events.
