Formula 1 didn't realize Las Vegas would be cold in November | Hacker News Reader

Formula 1 didn't realize Las Vegas would be cold in November

jalopnik.com

89 pointsgeox73 comments

The low, at this point, is predicted to be 51F/10C on race day, 13C supposedly at 10pm (1). Montreal has the record at 5C. There are a lot of reasons to roll your eyes at the LV GP, this just seems to be the latest click bait trend. At least its not going to be 50C in the cockpit.

(1)https://www.wunderground.com/hourly/us/nv/las-vegas/date/202...

Edit: Here is an article from February saying the temp could be a concern, and listing all the ranges, https://www.meteomotorsport.com/2023/02/f1-2023-climatology....

That’s warmer than the British GP in July. And I thought most roads retain heat late into the night

I clicked on one of these links in Google News, and now I get all the click-baits for the Las Vegas GP such as "Las Vegas GP cancelled?". Jalopnik is one of them, but they are all pretty much trash. This is definitely not HN material.

I mean the bigger issue is that it looks like it is going to rain on Friday

You must not be into racing if you think this is an issue.

it's an issue for fans who are paying thousands of dollars to fly in and watch

At least in Vegas there is other things to do. And it’s not muddy. Go ask the fans at Spa last year!

To be fair, it _can_ get cold. The average low is in the 50s.

The more puzzling thing is why they decided to start the race at 10pm local time! If this an attempt to introduce Americans to Formula 1, I’m not sure it’s going to work.

They explain this in the article. It's to make the broadcast easier to watch for the European audience.

Yeah, I can understand that there are some counterintuitive parts to broadcasting an F1 race. Still, it seems like a waste of effort to host it in Vegas but only show it to Europeans.

I wonder how much input the city had. Maybe they decided it was better to try to recruit Europe than to win over America?

it's also because they wanted to run it at night with all the casinos (and the sphere) on the route lit up. the miami gp started at 1230pm and the montreal gp at 11am (930am and 8am vegas time, respectively) but the las vegas gp route doesn't look half as good in daylight

Skies are dark in Vegas by 6pm right now (and probably a lot more comfortable than it will be at 10pm, generally).

Yeah but that’s too early for Europe. It’s just an optimization problem across many dimensions. And rarely is the optimum there the optimum if you disregard all but one dimension.

Some combination of “strip looks better at night”, “showtime or post”, “needs to be viewable by Europeans” and so on.

That is a terrible explanation to be honest. 10pm PT is 6am UTC, which is not a great time for Europeans. Both COTA and Miami started around noon PT, which is 8pm UTC and a much more reasonable time in Europe if you ask me.

Unless they are trying to appeal to Australian fan, my money on the real reason is that they wanted the glamour of a night race in Vegas.

It's worth noting that the article says "in order to allow" not "a great time for European audience." Surely 0600 is better than 0400?

Sure, but why bother. There’s a point where you’d think they’d just focus on their local time and I feel like 6 am has passed it…

As a F1 fan at the West coast, 6am or 7am are my favorite time for race events. It allows me to watch the race with a nice cup of coffee and still have a full, productive day ahead. Of most races, like in Europe, were in the middle of the day I'd stop watching again like I did when I lived in Germany. I have other stuff to do than depend 20+ weekends a year watching F1

I feel the exact same way. I miss F1 races showing at 730AM EST, it was very easy to get up and have a full day. I barely bother watching the 1PM races.

Advertisers, they live in some deluded reality where there is no violence, no swearing and people watch TV all day but at night they don't exist.

This was a decision about some target group, I'm sure.

As a member of that European audience, a race that starts at 7am on a Sunday is definitely not easier to watch.

I do it every weekend to watch European sports during season. Sometimes, it's even earlier

You mean kicking back over some eggs benedict, a meat and cheese charcuterie board, with some champagne on the side, sitting back in your pine-panelled centrally heated chalet overlooking mountain landscapes relaxing having risen at 4.30pm for a hill run and vigorous workout isn't fitting what most Europeans do on a Sunday morning?

I'm pretty sure they're always getting into moving fights through corridors and narrow spaces in big rooms. Especially fancy commercial kitchens. At least that's what I see in movies.

Better than 2pm, ruining the entire day for pretty much anything else.

In Canada, I grew up getting up at 6/7am on Sundays to watch the races. North/South American races were definitely easier to watch, but we just got up early every 2 weeks. It was a ritual.

> It's to make the broadcast easier to watch for the European audience.

They’re just saying that because it sounds better than that the strip looks cooler at night.

Buy it's dark at 6pm. No need to wait till 10pm or midnight in the car of qualifying. I watch pretty much everything live, including many FP sessions, but I'm not gonna watch this qualifying live that's in my own timezones! Ridiculous!

> Buy it's dark at 6pm. No need to wait till 10pm or midnight

They’ve timed the race to be when the strip looks coolest but after the casino traffic has peaked.

> They’re just saying that because it sounds better than that the strip looks cooler at night.

For me, I’m all on board with “‘The Strip’ is built for showing off after the Sun goes down” is a much better marketing point than “European fans may watch it from a café, if they are up early enough.”

But that’s just me, a minimally interested F1 watcher who spends time in Las Vegas.

I watched the announcement of the LV GP. And I am pretty sure Domenicali answered the question that the GP is for local and the Las Vegas audience, regarding the time of the event.

I'm going to be honest, none of the US tracks have been great. Miami's asphalt was too rough, Austin's was a quintessential Hermann Tilke design (read: boring).

Hope Las Vegas is different, otherwise it really isn't a good way to attract that market.

Austin turn one uphill is pretty cool, I like driving on that track.

Oh, I can see that. Don't get me wrong, it must be a blast. But, for F1 cars specifically, it doesn't lend itself to great action.

I heard they was gonna run in Nashville, I got my hopes up for some air off the hills and some cars lost down potholes.

But of course they prettied up a little bit of the tourist areas and just did that.

They wanna punch up the ratings they need to get less formal. GTA the whole thing up. Don't close the streets or warn the civilians.

Indianapolis was too fast and hot that one year, one of the (two) tire manufactures disqualified their tires (and teams). So not even half the field ran the race. The Indy 500 course has a half-mile straightaway which allowed the F1 cars to build up unprecedented speed - all in hot midwestern summer heat.

Seems the diligence on local weather is not so good with these folks...

[*] "Michelin's tyre mistake sends US Formula One Grand Prix into farce" https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Michelin%27s_tyre_mistake_sends...

Yeah, that was absurd too.

I think the point is to get Europeans to travel to Las Vegas. So having the strip lit up and the casinos visible is essential.

And even more puzzling why is qualifying starting at midnight. That's 3 eastern lol.

I understand it's all so that people in the UK don't have to get up early

Well they're in good company. USA Track & Field didn't realize Orlando would be hot in February for the marathon Olympic trials.

https://www.reuters.com/sports/athletics/us-marathon-runners...

Clickbait headline - they obviously did realize or we wouldn't be reading the article.

This is just a bad summary of the real article

https://www.planetf1.com/news/ross-brawn-oversight-las-vegas...

Reading comments about the Jezebel layoffs I got the impression a lot of HN didn't love G/O Media blogs like this one...

Jalopnik is all about hyperbole and making fun of everything automotive. This is actually pretty mild for them. :)

It is practically a primary job of each formula one team to know exactly what the weather will be like, by the minute, on race day.

It gets cold in the desert. People head out to southern Utah to camp in October and November and are met with 40/30 degree weather and have to head back. Deserts can get really cold at night.

50F is “very, very cold”? And that’s form a Brit?

I understand F1 tires are sensitive to temperature, but I find it hard to believe none of the European races are chilly.

It can even get cold in October, especially if there is wind.

I'm a Raiders fan in a coldish place/different state and didn't know it gets cold there either

Edit: would have assumed LA/SD climate but desert

Desert means cold at night, especially cold at night during the winter, when night starts early.

Chilly during the day too! If you're a desert-dweller acclimated to 110° summers, 55° on a November afternoon is honestly kinda cold.

Having lived in both SoCal and Vegas, the difference is that Vegas is both hotter in the winter and colder in the summer... whereas a place like San Diego is blissfully mild year-round.

55F is cold, period. I’m so sad we’re going into winter, I’ll miss the beautiful 100F days.

55F is just starting to get cool, could be a beautiful day if the sun is shining. "cold" don't start till the 40s and if you're working theres still great days in the 30s.

anything hotter than 89F is hellish.

greets from Michigan.

Different strokes. I feel incredibly alive above 100F when I’m sweating. Anything under 50 and I tend to start getting depressed.

San Diego will be as low as 53°F tonight... it gets really chilly down here as the days get longer.

For sure, guess I normally associate that area with nice daytime temps and lack of rain

How can an entire formula 1 team just miss this?

You think they're smart because they've conned people to enjoy others almost wrecking?

I mean I was more making reference to not knowing it’s sometimes cold in high deserts in winter given they have massive teams and every car is millions.

They didn't, here is an article from Feb, https://www.meteomotorsport.com/2023/02/f1-2023-climatology....

They just got the head guy to say he didn't know, and now its all of F1 that didn't know.

Seems like great journalism when you run your article, “ Formula 1 Didn't Realize Las Vegas Would Be Cold In November” and… it’s a blatent clickbait lie.

"Horrendous news boys -- the conditions are not ideal."

I want to be able to enjoy F1, but it's hard to take seriously when the heavy hitters bitch about innovations and technologies that would "increase costs too much" or are "not in the spirit of the sport", but then invest $$$ into burning oil (or more specifically, the additives in the oil) for a tad more power while overlooking that a desert is cold at night.

Formula E exists. It just sucks. The cars are much slower, and there’s gimmicks.

The main difference is range, the F1 race lasts over twice as long.

The top speeds aren't that far apart.

FE still flies the crew and cars all over the world, it's hardly eco-friendly.

https://www.planetf1.com/features/formula-1-formula-e-compar...

Top speed has little to do with racing.

“ The outright pole lap record around Monaco in an F1 car came in 2019 with Lewis Hamilton clocking a 1:10.166, while the fastest qualifying lap in Formula E in 2023 was Sascha Fenestraz’s 1:28.773, several seconds slower than what the Formula 2 cars manage around the same circuit.”

Formula E is downright slow compared for F1

Stop trying to make Formula E a thing. It's just not going to happen. If you have not been in the presence of the orchestral cacophony that is V10 engine's slinging around 18k rpm, you loose your right to comment.

I’m curious, I watched something about how F1 are migrating towards hybrid drive chains, does that change the sound at all?

GP seems to be a little factious, they haven't had V10s in awhile, although they were considered the 'best sounding' F1 engine. They have migrated to hybrid V6s for the last 5 years or so.

If it was just for the sound, perhaps we'd just insist on the 4 rotor wankle engines of the 787b

They have been """hybrid""" for quote some time with the mgu and mgk.

So you're saying you're not really in it for the competition, you just like the spectacle?

The notion of their being any competiom in F1 is laughable.

Ah yes, Hamiltion Verstappen 2021 wasn't a competition, it was a _____ ?

Brief moment in time. Look on the timeline a little bit longer than drive to survive.

Senna v Prost?

Schumacher v Hakkinen?

Alonso v Vettel (2012)?

Hamilton v Rosberg (2016) ?

Hamilton v Alonso?

The whole of 2010?

while I agree that the v10 is the most unholy of sky shredding sounds…. its been almost 20yrs since F1 has had them at this point. Times change I guess..

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