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Las Vegas, USAF1 is back in the USA this weekend for the very glitzy night race of the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Located in the heart of the USA's gambling mecca of Las Vegas, including the iconic Strip, the Las Vegas Grand Prix Circuit winds through 6.2 km of street circuit, the second longest track on the calendar, and although it boasts 17 corners, only 6 of these are actual braking events, so the cars will be running full throttle for much of the time, making it also the second fastest track.
The shape of the circuit resembles an upside down pig; at the hindquarters, the pit area largely oversits the footprint of the original car park circuit used for two Grands Prix back in the early 1980's, with some specially purchased land to the north forming the hairpin at the end of the start-finish straight. After the tight left hand hairpin of Turn 1 the first corner unwinds through Turns 2, 3 & 4 and the cars will use as much traction as possible for the largely straight remainder of the first sector along the “belly” which ends with an abrupt 90° right hander at Turn 5, possibly representing one of the first points the tyres will have to behave.
The second sector, which would be the forelegs and face of our porcine simile, is a gentle left hander at Turn 6 leading into a chicane and switchback sequence through Turns 7 & 8 and Turn 9, the remainder of the sector is fast again, Turn 10 and Turn 11 won't even register on the drivers other then a slight nudge of the steering wheel, before a hard brake into the 90° left hand Turn 12 which is the second point crash barriers may come into play.
Sector 3 starts with the very long straight, along the spine of the beast, with Turn 13> really serving only as a marker for the DRSDrag Reduction System detection point, and cars will run flat out before the third and final hard braking point into the 90° Turn 14, which falls off to the left, leaving the car unsettled as it wiggles through Turns 15 & 16 before heading back up the back straight towards Turn 17, a flat-out blind left that looks innocent enough, but when taken at some 220kph leaves the drivers very little margin for error as the arrive back on the short start-finish straight.
With a smooth and very new surface, and as a night race, low track temperatures — possibly into single figures — getting the tyres working properly will represent a challenge to the teams, and this may limit the speeds at which the cars can manage the three hard corners; even with the softest tyres in the Pirelli range and running at the lower end of pressure tolerances, its still going to be a slippery time, particularly during Qualifying.
| Predicted weather for the race: |  | 15°C |
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| Dry Tyre Compounds | Cinturato Wet Tyres | |||
| Hard × 2 | Medium × 3 | Soft × 7 | Intermediate × 4 | Full Wet × 3 |  C3 (midrange) |  C4 (softer) |  C5 (softest) |  |  Cold Start |