Feature: Formula 1
©️ 2021 Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One™ Team. All rights reserved.
The God That Failed
W
Formula One is unwelcome in Las Vegas at any speed. By David McKee hoever wins the Las Vegas Grand Prix, to be held in mid-November, the loser is already obvious: the average
citizen of Las Vegas. Even if the promised economic benefits materialize—which looks doubtful—Formula One racing is so far behind the eight ball with Las Vegans it will never come out ahead. Instead, it is careening full speed toward the biggest public relations debacle since New Year’s Eve of 1999. For those with short memories, short-term greed and Y2K technology fears made that New Year’s weekend a signal failure. Except for a spray of confetti from Paris-Las Vegas’ Eiffel Tower, there was nothing even faintly resembling fireworks on the Las Vegas Strip … unless you count the utility-pole climber who electrocuted himself. Instead, guests were herded inside casinos, as the latter tried to desperately make as much money as possible, should the world’s microchips shut down as midnight rolled over into the year 2000. Hotel rates, which had been jacked up astronomically, had to 40
be ratcheted way back down when demand failed to match supply. The whole affair left Las Vegas with a bad aftertaste and has never been remotely emulated—until now.
Keep out
“F1 has done a disastrous job of managing the optics for this event,” says Vital Vegas author Scott Roeben, who has been keeping a close eye on the Grand Prix. “It's pretty clear nobody understood the impact the race would have. Basically they sold the Strip to be used as a backdrop without much consideration for the unintended consequences.” The ostensible host city finds itself very much on the outside, looking in. Most recently, workers were seen glazing and erecting canopies over Strip pedestrian bridges, to prevent lookie-lous from seeing moments of the race for free. Initially, locals were only to be offered standing-room places, at hundreds of dollars a pop. That has changed, incrementally, one of a number of anecdotal signs that the much-ballyhooed event isn’t drawing as well as anticipated. www.casinolifemagazine.com