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Las Vegas: The famous fountains at the Bellagio won’t be very visible this week amid the roar of Formula 1 racing on the Las Vegas Strip, and gondoliers won’t be serenading tourists at the Venetian resort.
“Fountains have been shut off, canals drained, streets closed or harder to navigate,” Michael Green, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas history professor, said after six months of road work and temporary grandstand construction for some of the wealthiest spectators in sports. “What are they calling it? Stripmageddon? It is clearly causing a lot of uproar.”
The famed Las Vegas Strip will host a Formula One race this weekend.Credit: AP
“But this is a different kind of big event,” said Green, who remembers two grand prix races held 42 years ago at Caesars Palace. “We’re talking about billionaires from around the world. They’re going to bring in a ton of money. They’re not necessarily the usual tourist.”
Organisers, local officials and hotel operators believe the discomfort will be forgotten after racing ends late Saturday. They hope Las Vegas will join Monaco as one of the world’s premium grand prix cities.
But predictions of sold-out seats and peak demand for the most expensive grand prix on the F1 calendar may have been overly optimistic. Tickets were still available this week and some hotels have slashed room rates.
Post-race, officials say the Venetian gondola canal will be refilled and casino operator MGM Resorts International has promised to replace Bellagio sidewalk shade trees removed to frame the fountains with thousands of grandstand seats and skybox suites. One worker died during construction.
For now, many familiar Strip sights are blocked by track barriers, fencing, pedestrian walkway screens, scaffolding and advertising erected around the nighttime race on streets usually choked with taxis, buses and rental cars and lined by pedestrians posing for selfies.
The opening ceremony for the race will be held on Wednesday local time. Australians Kylie Minogue and Keith Urban are on the bill alongside the F1’s first global artist in residence, will.i.am, as well as J. Balvin, Tiësto, John Legend, and Thirty Seconds to Mars, to name a few.
On Thursday night, producer Mark Ronson will perform at the T-Mobile Zone at the Sphere between two racing practice sessions. The mastermind behind the “Barbie” soundtrack already knows there’s a big crossover between music fans and F1 fans.
Now “we’ll find out the cross-section of F1 and ‘Barbie’ fans,” he jokes.
Kylie Minogue has been performing in Las Vegas and will appear as part of the opening ceremony for the city’s return to Formula 1 racing. Credit: Erik Melvin
By 10pm Saturday, Red Bull’s dominant triple world champion Max Verstappen and his rivals will be speeding down the famed Strip, past the lit-up landmark casinos and hotels, in what is promised to be a night-time spectacular.
Former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, now 93, won’t be on hand for the race, but is watching with interest, given his efforts to establish Las Vegas as a grand prix city in the early 1980s.
Australian driver Alan Jones won the Las Vegas Grand Prix in 1981.Credit: AP Laserphoto
Unlike the races of 1981 and 1982, the circuit is now where he always wanted it – on the famed Strip.
“Last time … we couldn’t run on the Strip, which is what I wanted to do,” Ecclestone recalled this week. “I wanted to make sure when somebody turned their television on they knew they were in Vegas, not in the desert. They promised me ‘yes, we can do it’.
“The first year we ran in this area which was Caesars Palace car park, or part of it, but it was on the understanding that the following year we’d be able to do what I had in mind. But it never happened because the people in Vegas, all the hotels, couldn’t see that it was going to be any good for them.
“So that’s why we never went back to Vegas (after 1982).”
It’s that resistance from local business – and the exorbitant expense, even by grand prix standards – that has Ecclestone sceptical the Las Vegas race will endure, even though organisers have a 10-year permit for the race.
“I hope it is (a success) but I’m not sure it’s long-term,” he said.
An image of the track for the Las Vegas Formula 1 Grand Prix taken from the F1 website.Credit: www.formula1.com
“I think the last thing they are concerned with is the race itself.
“The most likely is there will be as big a crowd as you can get, this time around. Whether it will hang on, especially with some of the prices … why would people pay this sort of money to be in Vegas when they can go to Austin and everything is much, much better and much easier?
“They’ve got a bit of a battle. I hope they win, but I wouldn’t want to put my money on it.”
Las Vegas was added to the 24-race worldwide F1 schedule a year ago, the third US circuit on the calendar as the sport revved up its push into North America. Immediately, tickets and hotel packages costing tens of thousands of dollars per person went on sale.
The Formula 1 grandstands outside the Bellagio hotel-casino during construction. Credit: Las Vegas Review-Journal
After road work began in April, race organisers asked Clark County to contribute half of an estimated $80 million in repaving costs. Jim Gibson, chairman of the elected body with jurisdiction over the Las Vegas Strip, said last week that talks about who pays what will continue after the race.
“Formula 1 is in a class all its own” Gibson said. “By any standards, it’s been a very heavy lift for our community to take the steps necessary to have a successful event. Everyone who lives here, who works in the resort corridor in particular, has had to sacrifice because of the significant roadwork and construction.”
Liberty Media, which now runs Formula 1, is confident the pain will be worth it.
“I think once we have the event in Vegas there’s going to be a whole new recognition for Formula 1 in the United States, which still is our most important sponsorship market,” Liberty CEO Greg Maffei said in April.
With the Grand Prix in town, grandstands and skybox suites now frame the fountains outside Las Vegas’ Bellagio hotel-casino.Credit: AP
“A night race down the Strip that’s going to be iconic … that’s going to be on every piece of television imaginable.”
Strip closures are not unheard of on the Strip. Clark County Undersheriff Andrew Walsh said police were planning for the race “like it’s New Year’s Eve,” when they routinely close the Strip for fireworks that draw more than 300,000 people.
The department also has managed nighttime Strip marathons, and recent championship parades and rallies for the NHL Vegas Golden Knights and WNBA Las Vegas Aces.
The city hosts overnight outdoor music festivals — one covering several downtown blocks — and NASCAR races at the 80,000-seat Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Next February, it will host the NFL Super Bowl at Allegiant Stadium.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix is expected to draw more than 100,000 fans for practice, qualifying and featured races — 50 laps with the world’s elite drivers racing open-cockpit vehicles on a 6.1-kilometre road course.
Racers will start at a newly constructed permanent grandstand-and-pit facility and snake past the recently opened Sphere before hitting a 1.89-kilometre straightaway down the Strip at speeds expected to top 322 km/h.
Officials project the event will draw more than $1 billion to a local economy that aims to fill 152,000 hotel rooms. Rates in September averaged $201.50 per night. Earlier, amid race-week premiums, Caesars Palace offered a five-night stay overlooking the course from its Nobu Sky Villa at $5 million.
“If you were a Grand Prix devotee and you came here for the event in the early 80s, and this is the next time you visited, you’re in for a shock,” said Green.
– AP and Reuters
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