Question of the Day - 10 June 2022

[Editor's Note: For this answer, we turned to a local racing expert, Randy Cannon. Randy is the author of two books on auto racing in Las Vegas: Stardust International Raceway -- Motorsports Meets the Mob in Vegas, 1965–1971 and Caesars Palace Grand Prix -- Las Vegas, Organized Crime and the Pinnacle of Motorsport. We recommend both highly for Las Vegas and racing history buffs and we suspect Randy will be called on to answer further questions as the Las Vegas Grand Prix approaches.]

The 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix has been a constant global buzz since the joint announcement on March 31, 2022, by Formula 1, Liberty Media, and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. LVCVA social-media numbers alone were exponentially greater than for the LVCVA announcement of Super Bowl LVIII being held in Las Vegas.

The biggest news since the original announcement has been Liberty Media, the majority investor in the Formula One Group, paying a reported $240 million for the old Ice Nightclub property at the northeast corner of Harmon Ave. and Koval Lane. The prior owners tied that land up for $105 million just three years ago. Not a bad Las Vegas flip.

Liberty Media created a subsidiary for the land purchase, Liberty Dice, Inc. Translation: Liberty will literally own a portion of the Las Vegas Formula 1 circuit.  

Turn 14 will take the race field off of Harmon and onto the Liberty property. Liberty will also own the start- and finish-line straight. Track designer Hermann Tilke is designing a tight cluster through turns 1-4 that will return the circuit to Koval Lane and back onto Las Vegas streets.

The Liberty property will also house the purpose-built paddock and pit facilities. Word on the street is that Liberty Dice might also have plans to aggregate land beyond its current purchase to develop a themed resort property.

Liberty and Formula 1 reportedly have the responsibility of resurfacing the balance of the city-street sections to Formula 1 paving specifications. That means that the Strip, as well as Harmon, Koval, and Sands, will undergo a significant amount of construction before November 2023.

The LVCVA will be responsible for organizing municipal and first-responder services to the tune of $6.5 million per year. LVCVA will also organize the activations and engagement of the resorts that touch the circuit and beyond. LVCVA and local governments will take the lessons learned from the 2022 NFL Draft held in Las Vegas and amplify them dramatically for the scale of the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Local viewing of the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix will mark the most significant departure from the 1981-1982 Caesars Palace Grand Prix. The new Las Vegas race circuit traverses the highest-profile resorts on the Strip, as opposed to being clustered on the Caesars Palace property alone. The Formula 1 field will race past the Mirage, Caesars, Bellagio, Cosmopolitan, the new MSG Sphere, Venetian, Palazzo, Wynn, and Encore. All the resorts are investing in support of the race event and their parties are expected to make Monaco look like Modesto. 

Look for the turn 1-4 section at Harmon and Koval to be surrounded by massive stadium seating for maximum visibility of the race field through that section. The Formula 1 drivers are expected to top 200 mph in front of Cosmo as they brake hard to turn left off the most famous boulevard in the western United States, if not the entire planet.

And I would definitely keep an eye on Las Vegas land values farther north and east of Harmon and Koval.