The sphere in stats: Las Vegas GP icon boasts 1.2m LEDs, 150 GPUs and more

When Formula 1 first announced it would return to Las Vegas after four decades for arguably the most ambitious street race in the world championship’s history, it was easy to picture the iconic sights of Sin City that F1 was hoping to build the event around.

The world renowned Vegas Strip. The dazzling Bellagio fountains. Ceasars Palace, the MGM Grand and many more neon-lit casinos.

But despite the circuit passing by the city’s most glamourous and well-known sights, there was another feature that grabbed by far the most attention over the inaugural race weekend in 2023 – the 112m tall, state-of-the-art, globe-shaped entertainment complex known simply as ‘the Sphere’.

Opened just weeks before last year’s race and sitting just next to the race track at the turns seven and eight chicane, the $2.8 billion Sphere is as unmissable a landmark as it’s possible to get. Constructed from approximately 54,000 square metres of LEDs, the external display of the venue – known as the ‘exosphere’ – is impossible to miss. The single largest LED screen on the planet allows for elaborate animations, videos and advertisements to be beamed throughout the city, becoming the perfect multi-purpose billboard for the sport’s ultimate night race.

What does it do?

The event organisers took full advantage of the sphere to display several elements on the Sphere. The structure adopted the form of a yellow cartoon face which sported the helmet designs of various drivers and ‘followed’ them with its eyes as they drove past.

Due to the sheer size of the feature, the Sphere was visible from almost all of the grandstand seats running along the final corner and on the approach to turn one. Even if it was not shown every lap of the race on the world feed coverage, the fans that paid many thousands of dollars to attend could hardly miss it.

There was even an entire section of the circuit grounds just outside the sphere known as the T-Mobile Zone where fans could purchase tickets to enjoy live music and other entertainment ongoing during the race.

During the race, the sphere had special graphics that were shown to denote major race status events, such as the Safety Car deployment and the chequered flag at the end of the race. But for most of the grand prix itself, the Sphere was used mainly to display advertisements for the event’s sponsors, including Heineken, Paramount+ and Google Chrome among others.

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Was it a distraction?

One of the biggest concerns heading into a brand new event and circuit ahead of last year’s first race was whether the giant ball of rapidly changing colours at the side of the track would prove a distraction to drivers when out on track.

“It’s very obvious,” noted then-AlphaTauri driver Daniel Ricciardo ahead of the weekend.

“It’s huge – we’re not going to miss it. But truthfully, when you get in that kind of rhythm and in that zone, you’re aware of everything, but you don’t really notice it – well, maybe you notice it, but it doesn’t kind of spark your awareness to a point where it’s actually affecting what you do.”

Before drivers had even turned a wheel on the Las Vegas Strip Circuit, race organisers announced that they would deliberately shy away from using yellows, reds and greens on the Sphere during the racing to minimise any risk of drivers instinctively reacting to what they thought was a yellow flag, red flag or green flag signal and create a dangerous situation.

Once the racing got underway, there were no complaints from drivers about the animations on the exosphere causing a distraction in the cockpit. As it turned out, the ‘best drivers in the world’ proved to be skilled at keeping focus.

Does it waste energy?

Although it’s fairly eye-catching, the amount of energy needed to power the Sphere is also eye-watering. The exterior is made of 1.2 million LED pucks, while the interior screen – the main attraction of the structure after all – uses 150 Nvidia RTX A6000 GPUs to power its displays, each with 48 gigabytes of memory.

But all that light generating hardware requires considerable power to operate it. A peak load of 28 megawatts is required to operate the sphere – approximately enough to power more than 20,000 American homes.

The Sphere’s operating company estimates that around 70% of the power used to run the Sphere comes from “dedicated solar and battery resources”. They also claim that the Sphere uses “the most energy-efficient lighting available” and are making voluntary purchases of carbon credits to “mitigate the impact of all non-renewable sources of power”.

Formula 1 has regularly advertised its ‘Net Zero 2030’ initiative to achieve net zero carbon emissions “from factory to flag” by the 2030 season. As well as carbon neutral television broadcasts of the British Grand Prix in 2021 and 2022, FOM has moved to entirely renewable energy at their main headquarters and is pushing to introduce a ‘100% sustainable fuel’ in the next generation of F1 power units in 2026.

The Las Vegas Grand Prix organisers say reducing the event’s carbon footprint is at the core of their operation and are “fully committed” to F1’s own net-zero goal. The event also piloted a water conservation scheme last year, using new technology to capture moisture from the air to produce drinking water.

Whether the Sphere’s energy consumption fits with those goals is debatable. However it’s important to remember the Sphere is not part of F1’s Las Vegas infrastructure and therefore does not contribute to the event’s carbon emissions – unlike, for example, the lights installed to illuminate the track.

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A fixture in F1’s night sky

While not directly connected to Formula 1’s operations in Las Vegas, the Sphere will continue to be a part of the grand prix as long as the event is on the F1 calendar.

“We have a long-term relationship with the Sphere, and I think we will have more programming in place,” F1’s outgoing CEO Greg Maffei said during last year’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.

“Partly because we didn’t know if the Sphere would be done, and partly we were hustling to get ourselves done, that combination made it hard to programme for this year [2023].

“But I think in future years, we’ll have a lot more going on.”

Although there are no details yet about what displays and animations will be featured for next weekend’s event, it’s likely that the Sphere will continue to be a major talking point of the Las Vegas Grand Prix into the future.

Pictures: The Las Vegas Grand Prix sphere in 2024

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