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Comment by alexose | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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