A grand prix in the city of Las Vegas first appeared on the F1 calendar in early 1980s as the ‘Caesars Palace Grand Prix’ – a race held as the season finale for the 1981 and 1982 seasons. The track was created in the parking lot of the Caesars Palace hotel, hence the name, and featured 14 turns run in an anti-clockwise direction. That put significant strain on the drivers’ necks, and coupled with the intense heat it was held in, made the race wholly unpopular.

After several rumoured attempts over the years, Formula 1 made its return to Las Vegas official in 2021 – forty years after the first race in that parking lot, with the grand prix joining the calendar from the 2023 season.

An iterative circuit design process and feasibility tests began years before that however, in 2018, with 31 different configurations of circuits mapped out over the city by renowned F1 circuit architect Hermann Tilke, and his son and fellow architect, Carsten Tilke.

Every one of the layouts they experimented with had one thing in common – a run down the iconic, infamous Strip – the boulevard that houses some of the world’s most famous hotels, casinos and restaurants. Craig Wilson, Head of Vehicle Performance at F1, said “a Las Vegas Grand Prix without that iconic backdrop wouldn’t have made sense and every major casino and hotel owner could see that”.

It’s a central feature of the final 6.201km, 17-turned circuit design and in fact makes up 30% of the lap’s distance. As a result, over the last two years the track has earned itself a reputation as a high speed challenge where the grip is low and the walls are close!

Characteristic Considerations

Top Speed vs. Cornering = Efficiency

As is apparent from the circuit map, much of the lap is made up of long straights and therefore top speed is a priority for the teams over this weekend.

Specifically, the flat-out 1.9km run out of turn 12 and down to turn 14 pushes the teams into running low drag setups. Although that is the longest full flat-out run around the lap, drivers will be flat to the floor with the throttle from turns 3 through to 5, turns 9 through to 12 and then out of turn 16 to the line – almost 80% of the lap.

Even so, there has to be a balance of that with some efficient downforce and mechanical grip not only for cornering through the lower speed turns 1-4, 7-9, 12 and 14-16, but also for tyre performance. How that’s achieved will look different up and down the pit lane: some teams will opt to strip off much of the downforce and run a ‘Monza-style’ thin, shallow rear wing design, while others may retain a more ‘v-shaped’ wing to find that efficiency of downforce versus drag.

Gambling for grip

Beyond the bright lights and busyness, Las Vegas is a city nestled in the middle of the desert and so with its November calendar slot and night session times, the ambient and track temperatures rarely get above 15°C.

That wreaks havoc on the Pirelli rubber and its narrow operating window, which getting into is made tougher already by the track layout itself. Together, it can all be a recipe for incredibly low grip, sliding and therefore graining.

Graining occurs when the bulk or internal temperature of the tyre is cooler but the surface overheats, causing the top layer of the compound to tear up and shed bits of rubber that then re-stick onto it unevenly: changing the contact patch, reducing grip and driving degradation. Keeping it at bay is all about bringing a tyre into that window carefully so the bulk and surface heat up together. Pushing too much too soon can compromise that, sending a driver back into the pit lane even after just one or two laps.

Charles Leclerc found that out in the early phase of the grand prix last year after pushing to challenge George Russell for the lead and suffering with graining of his medium tyre that made him the first of the front runners to box.

Even on the softer C5 compound in qualifying, drivers through the field were running alternative run plans to achieve their optimal tyre warmup, which can and will look different per driver and team according to more car-specific or setup factors.

The consequences of missing that optimal window with the walls being so tight and the run-off so minimal makes finding grip a high stakes gamble.

Reopening the streets = reset

As with a number of street tracks on the calendar, much of the Las Vegas circuit reopens to the public and traffic once F1 and its support series’ sessions are done for the day. While that offers a unique opportunity for fans to get onto a circuit over a grand prix weekend, it means that when the drivers start their running the next day, things are not quite as they left them.

The rubber that was laid down is picked up by traffic and dirt and dust make their way back onto the racing line, offering a complete reset of the track conditions and that all important grip level, and adding another element of unpredictability to this challenge.

The Compounds

In the midst of all of this uncertainty, Pirelli have opted to keep the tyre selection for this year a constant. As was the case for the last two Las Vegas Grands Prix, the C3 will be the hard, C4 the medium and C5 the soft.

Though the C6 was available to Pirelli for selection as of this year as an ‘ultra-soft’ compound intended for use at street circuits like this, Pirelli decided not to go with a softer trio due to the risk of graining. The efficiency of the C6 would likely have been excessively compromised by this circuit’s characteristics.

Although the compound selection has remained the same over the past two years of running here, the way they have been used has differed year on year.

In 2023, the teams found out the hard way that pushing early on in a stint in such cold conditions results in the soft and even medium tyres becoming incredibly tricky and in the hard tyre being the preferable option. Pirelli concluded that “there wasn’t much difference between” the one-stop and two-stops, though the safety cars largely dictated when many boxed.

In 2024, even armed with this learning, a number of drivers pushed too early over their opening stint “without giving too much thought to tyre management”, as Mario Isola said. The level of graining seen for some drivers pushed the strategy from the one-stop Pirelli had predicted as optimal heading in to the two-stop that was run by the majority of the field in reality. Even with some graining seen on the C4, both it and the C3 hard both suffered relatively low levels of performance degradation which did make the one-stop possible with careful management.

This year, the improved mechanical properties of the current compound range could reduce the risk of degradation even further and push the one-stop back into contention, even if the two-stop may be the more conservative choice.

The Weather

The cold might not be the only thing the teams have to contend with weather-wise this weekend, as Las Vegas has been hit by rain in the build up to the first practice session.

Although further rain is unlikely, anything can happen in Vegas and a 30% chance of precipitation does remain for all three days of running. The temperature is set to be between 11-12°C, marginally higher than previous years.

The Las Vegas Grand Prix begins with Free Practice 1 at 16:30 local time on Thursday November 20th. The rest of the timings for the weekend are as follows (all in local time):

FP1: Thursday 20th November, 16:30-17:30

FP2: Thursday 20th November, 20:00-21:00

FP3: Friday 21st November, 16:30-17:30

Qualifying: Friday 21st November, 20:00-21:00

Las Vegas Grand Prix: Saturday 22nd November, 20:00