Las Vegas GP stats preview: F1’s 1,100th round begins a spate of Saturday races

The Las Vegas Grand Prix may be the first race with that title to appear on the Formula 1 calendar, but it is the third time the city has hosted the world championship.

The car park of the Caesars Palace hotel was used for races in 1981 and ‘82, but with no chance of getting to race down the city’s iconic Strip – as F1 will be doing this weekend – the Caesars Palace Grand Prix dropped off the calendar and was picked up by CART for its 1983 and ‘84 seasons.

It was a similar story for other street circuits in the USA in the eighties, including the two other venues in the country F1 visited in the same year as its last race in Las Vegas. Long Beach hosted F1 from 1976 to 1983 and has been on the IndyCar calendar ever since.

F1 raced in Detroit from 1982 to 1988, before CART took over the track from 1989 to 1991. That race was subsequently relocated to Belle Isle, but returned to downtown Detroit this year and used some of the roads which formed F1’s original track.

The new Las Vegas track will be F1’s 12th circuit in the USA in its 74-year history. Only 13 countries in total have hosted F1 at more than one track, with France having seven different circuits and Spain having six while Britain, Italy and Portugal have each used four different venues for races.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the USA is among the nine nations to have held more than one round of the world championship in a season, having held two races in 1959 and 1960, then again from 1976 to 1981, 1983, 1984 and most recently last year. In 2023 there have already been races in Miami and at the Circuit of the Americas, meaning Las Vegas will be F1’s third trip to the USA within a year.

It last did that in 1982, with races in Long Beach, Detroit and Las Vegas. The only other season to feature three races in the same country was the pandemic-disrupted 2020 campaign where F1 had to hastily arrange three visits in Italy – to Monza, Imola and Mugello – to make up for cancelled rounds elsewhere.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Although the USA has had an impressive tally of 13 years with multiple F1 races, which matches Germany, there have been 30 seasons featuring multiple Italian rounds.

The Las Vegas Grand Prix will be the 1,100th round of the world championship. Of course this isn’t strictly the 1,100th F1 race, as 15 of those events were run for Formula 2 cars in 1952 and 1953 while IndyCars were used for the 11 editions of the Indianapolis 500 that were on the first F1 calendars, and the 76th to be held in the USA. Only Italy (105), Germany (79) and Britain (78) have hosted more.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

For the first time since the 1985 South African Grand Prix an F1 weekend will finish on a Saturday (if everything goes to plan) courtesy of the Las Vegas Grand Prix’s unusual timetable. Practice sessions take place on Thursday and Friday, followed by qualifying as the clock strikes midnight to mark the start of Saturday and then the race at 10pm that evening.

The last 680 grands prix have been held on Sunday, and this weekend’s race will be the 70th in the world championship to be held on a Saturday and the 86th to not take place on a Sunday, with F1 having raced at least once on every day of the week. The USA is responsible for the only F1 races to be held on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays, all being editions of the Indy 500 when it was on the calendar in the fifties.

Remarkably, three of the next four grands prix will be held on Saturdays. While normal service will resume at next week’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the first two races on the 2024 F1 calendar are also scheduled for Saturdays. And as those races are held much further east, they will appear live on Saturday for many more fans, including those in Europe, unlike this weekend’s event.

Fernando Alonso will embark on his 17th US F1 race this weekend. Not only is he old enough to remember the last time the paddock got packed up on a Saturday (though admittedly he was four at the time), he is also the only active F1 driver who was alive when the series last raced in Las Vegas.

Williams, Ferrari and McLaren were on the grid at the time. Only one active team can already claim to have won in Las Vegas: Williams, who took Alan Jones to victory in the 1981 edition of the event. Michele Alboreto won the 1982 event for Tyrrell, whose entry was later bought by BAR, who ultimately became Mercedes.

Also present for that last race in Vegas were Toleman (which after several ownership changes over the years became the Alpine team of today) and Alfa Romeo (which in its current form is a completely separate entity run from Switzerland but using the Italian marque’s name to brand its cars).

The first two races in Las Vegas also had the distinction of being the championship-deciding season finales. Both 1981 champion Nelson Piquet and his successor Keke Rosberg clinched their crowns with fifth place finishes in those races.

The original Las Vegas track only lasted two years with F1, and only five of the circuits that F1 raced on in 1982 remain on the calendar to this day. Four are in Europe, and the other is Canada’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix

• Tost blames track inspection oversight for Sainz’s damage in Las Vegas
• Hard to repeat “rare” combination of factors behind Vegas shunt – Norris
• Las Vegas Grand Prix “got a lot more hate than it deserved” – Sargeant
• Williams’ “incredible” Vegas qualifying made us “poor” in race – Vowles
• Piastri is first rookie to take two fastest laps in a season since Hamilton

Browse all 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix articles