What It Was Like Attending A Formula 1 Race As An Imposter

Last weekend I attended the Las Vegas Grand Prix, my very first Formula 1 race. I’d been invited by our friends at eBay Motors, and after having heard so much about how fun F1 races are from fellow journalists and car-people, I was excited to see what the second annual Las Vegas race was like. It was to be a two-day endeavor, with the flight, meals, lodging, and race tickets generously taken care of by eBay, and yet I was still a bit anxious about one thing: I was an imposter.

I arrived in Vegas on Friday, and what struck me immediately was just how invested Las Vegas is in F1. I mentioned this in a previous article, but I’ll show again just how cool the Las Vegas airport’s F1 theme was.

Check out this huge LEGO:

Look at this metal statue, of sorts:

Here’s a Heineken F1 car in the liquor store:

And here’s a huge helmet on a baggage claim carousel:

It was at this point, as I watched people walking through the airport wearing Ferrari and McLaren and Mercedes jackets, that I began to get a bit nervous.

You see, the last time I watched Formula 1 I was about 10 years old, living in Germany, watching Michael Schumacher conquer the world. He was the hometown hero, really, though after a while, he became so dominant that my brothers and I had to choose different drivers to root for, just to keep things interesting. I chose Michael’s brother, Ralf, I recall one of my brothers choosing Mika Häkkinen, and I think there may have been a Jacques Villeneuve fan in our family (though probably mostly because of the fun-to-pronounce name).

Cut to 2003, after my family moved to the U.S. for the final time, and that was the end of my interest in racing, even though I now lived only 25 minutes from Kansas Speedway. I moved on to follow American ball-sports, especially baseball, football, and later NCAA and NBA basketball (which is my current favorite sport, primarily because I love following the characters). My interest in racing never returned, even after I studied engineering and dug myself deep into the automotive industry. F1 cars, to me, seemed distant; these were expensive cars that had nothing to do with a vehicle I could buy at a dealership, so why would I care?

When I left my engineering gig to become a car journalist, every now and then racing-related news would spring up, and while I’d occasionally volunteer to write it up to help my editorial team, most of the time I had to step back and yield the story to someone else. I didn’t have the knowledge or the interest to write about racing, and though I enjoyed attending rally races and drift events and off-road races and even Indycar races as a spectator, actually following along with each league wasn’t something I was interested in.

So as I stood there, bags at my sides, staring out at a city that’s clearly gone all-in on Formula 1, and looking at F1 attire-wearing visitors enthusiastically arriving from around the globe to see their favorite racers duke it out at 200 MPH, I couldn’t help but feel a little uncomfortable. I had sorta feared I might feel this way when I had accepted eBay Motors’ generous invitation. Maybe it would pass, I thought, as I entered a taxi heading for my hotel.

The anxiety only grew from there. Like I said, the entire town was in F1 mode, and my hotel — right next to the track — was no different. Everyone staying in that Virgin hotel (which was right next to the track) was there for the race, and everyone — everyone — was talking about the teams, the drivers, the cars.

I was an imposter. This wasn’t my sport. I barely knew the names of any of the drivers. Lando? Sainz? Who are these folks? What’s with the Bottas guy who seems so beloved despite not being so great? What’s with the pictures of him in a speedo? Why is nobody talking about the handsome legend, Fernando Alonso? (Whom I saw at the Indy 500 a 7 years back). How good is this German guy, Nico Hülkenberg? Are the Germans still dominating like they did when I was a kid?

I didn’t know much about who was winning this year and who wasn’t. I didn’t know why the whole atmosphere felt so…anglo. I really had no clue why driver X got screwed by team Y and why driver Z is leaving his team after N-teen years to the cross-town rivals. I had no clue.

Heading To The Track

I checked into my hotel, had lunch, and headed to the track for Friday’s qualifying session; I’d read Formula 1’s “beginner’s guide” prior to arriving at the race, as things have changed in the last 20 years. There’s lots of great stuff in the guide:

Thanks to the Beginner’s Guide, I understood that qualifying basically involved three stages, with the last five drivers being kicked out after each. As such, after stage one, grid positions 20-16 have been set, and then after stage two, grid positions 15-11 have been set. The final 10 drivers race in stage 1, ultimately finishing the grid-setting process. The three stages are 18 minutes, 15 minutes, and 12 minutes, respectively.

Anyway, before I headed to my seats near the track, I walked past a crowd of adoring fans hanging on to this young man’s every word:

His name is Oscar, and he seems like a friendly young Australian guy. He answered normal questions about his life and his thoughts on other drivers, and what he likes to do in his free time — all very straightforward things — but, like I said, the crowd couldn’t get enough. The youngster had become incredibly beloved by age 23.

I walked through a bunch of tunnels before seeing a large group of people roped off, probably because a driver was walking past:

I then got an RFID wristband, which — along with my ticket on my phone — was the key to getting anywhere at the Las Vegas Grand Prix:

eBay kindly took us to the paddock, where the tour guide taught me all sorts of things about tires. Apparently each team has a technician from Pirelli, who’s basically their tire consultant/installer.

The Paddock

While walking through the paddock (which, to my untrained eye, looked a little empty), I learned that there are three different tire types: Dry, intermediate, and full-wet, as shown below:

The tour guide told me that the full-wet tire is barely used, since races tend to be canceled when there’s standing water. The intermediate tire, shown in the middle above, gets used when there’s just a moist surface, and the dry tire comes in six different compounds: C0 to C5. C0 is the hardest and longest-lasting tire, which is used on courses that tear up tires whereas C5 is the softest tire, used for lower-speed street courses. Pirelli picks three compound options for each race, and teams can choose 13 sets, along with four intermediate and three full-wet sets.

The tour guide told me things seemed a little quiet this year — not in terms of the crowd (though that may have been down quite a bit over last year), but in terms of what teams were telling the media. The teams, the tour guide reckoned, seemed to be keeping their cards closer to their chest for this race. They wanted every advantage they could get.

There was more to the paddock than just learning about tires and media tactics; there were a bunch of journalists in there (see ESPN reporters on the left, below), I bet a few celebs roaming around (though I didn’t see any in the paddocks), nice cafes, and F1-people who walked among everyone else — many gladly having photos taken as they walked.

From the paddocks, I headed into the “Champions Club” section.

Checking Out The ‘Champions Club,’ Watching Ferraris Race, Watching F1 Practice

This was quite a fancy place, with good food everywhere, and a nice view of the track:

 

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I took a few photos of F1 cars doing practice runs — or, at least, I tried to:

Cars from the Ferrari Challenge — which ran before the F1 race and featured drivers from dealerships around the world — were much easier to capture with my camera. Even though the Ferrari 488 Challenge Evo cars can keep up with F1 cars in terms of overall top speed, my seat was at a turn, which the F1 cars could apparently take at a much, much higher speed:

Then, after I played my very first racing sim game (it was lots of fun), came qualifying, which was actually more intense than I expected.

Qualifying

Again, it seemed like there weren’t that many people at the track on Friday (there’s been debate on whether attendance was significantly down this year), so qualifying was a cool way to watch an exciting race, but in a bit more intimate setting (to be sure, I was in a section of the face that was more “exclusive,” but still, the event didn’t seem crazy-packed on Friday).

The truth is, I really didn’t know who was racing or what was going on, but people around the track — some from my party, some not — kept asking me who I was rooting for, and when I replied I wasn’t sure, I think that prompted folks to tell me all about the teams and the racers. In fact, they were excited to do so.

I was a little uncomfortable with my lack of knowledge, but I noticed during qualifying that the fans at the race didn’t look at me as an imposter at all; many of them were also new to the F1 game, with Netflix’s legendary Drive To Survive having created an absolutely enormous fanbase in a flash of time.

“So, this guy, Carlos Sainz, is like the nicest guy ever,” someone told me — more like Carlos Saint, amirite? “Hamilton… his car isn’t the best this year, but you can never count him out,” someone else said. “Verstappen’s team doesn’t have a fast enough rear wing for this race, but it’s Max. Max is max” someone else said.

When I asked about Fernando Alonso and why nobody has said a word about him, someone told me: “Oh, yeah, no chance. The Aston Martin team has been awful.”

So I sat there and watched the race on the monitor above me, and the track just ahead (without a monitor, you really can’t tell what’s happening outside of the 1 second the car blasts by). F1 drivers battled it out to secure their grid positions, with announcers on the TV describing which cars seem the best sorted for this chilly track in Vegas. All the while, members of my party were telling me about the teams and drivers — and not just about their professional lives, either. I noticed that so much information that F1 fans were telling me was about the drivers’ personal lives, which seemed to interest them easily as much as their racing prowess.

“Holy crap, Gasly! He’s got the third best lap!” someone told me, excitedly. “Um, why does —” I replied, only to be cut off “Nobody saw that coming! This is awesome!”

Everyone – and I mean everyone — loves an underdog. In any sport.

“Oh no, not again!” someone said. “Those poor Williams mechanics!” someone blurted when Franco Colapinto crashed his car into a wall. Shortly thereafter, someone from my party produced a meme about Williams mechanics.

“I don’t… what does this mean?” I asked?

“Oh, dude, Williams has dealt with far, far, far too many crashes this year. That of all cars, Williams wrecked, it’s just so bad!”

The F1 Reddit thread above seems to echo these sentiments.

Race Day

On Saturday, I worked from my hotel much of the day, as the race didn’t start until late at night (it’s a 10PM start time, which seems to be a controversy, of sorts. Some say it caters to certain audiences unfairly; I have no clue — again, this is all stuff I’m hearing out of my periphery).

I headed out early in the evening for the race so I could see more of the track, and try to understand how it fits into the Las Vegas cityscape, as I’d been a bit disoriented the previous night. Was this really on the strip? It was hard to tell.

Walking around did nothing to help me orient myself; the best thing I could do was look at the tall casinos and then at a map, because the track — and the absolutely gargantuan temporary structures surrounding it — was so enormous and so compartmentalized I felt like I was a mouse in a maze.

The track consists of a bunch of “zones,” and my ticket only worked in the “East Harmon Zone,” so entering the “T-Mobile Zone At Sphere” or the “Flamingo Zone By Caesar Rewards” or the “South Koval Zone” or any other zone just wasn’t possible.

I wish I had taken more photos of the art installations, because there were some good ones!

I tried walking around the whole track, but it was impossible; I got lost about a dozen times, running into dead ends; while doing so, I saw this temporary bridge built over the track so that commuters could drive over it. I found this impressive:

At about 6:30, I took a few photos of an empty track, which is just a beautiful thing to see:

I even got to see the Driver’s Championship Trophy:

There he is: Michael Schumacher, just above the legend Ayrton Senna:

I also had a look at the insane number of vendors offering mountains of free food to anyone who bought tickets (which started at about $1000):

In due time on that Saturday, things finally became legitimately crowded; I’m sure celebs like Ludarcris holding concerns helped quite a bit:

But there were lots of other fun activations around the track:

You can see that the food vendors got really, really busy:

After I had heard so many stories about each of the drivers and teams during qualifying, I couldn’t help but hop onto my laptop Friday night and learn more about everyone. The dynamics of all the personalities was just so alluring that, by Saturday, race day, I was now much more into the event than I’d thought I’d be.

Where we sat, we could really only see the tops of the cars over the jersey barriers between us and the track, but we had a monitor, we had our own private little corner of the track, and we had the sound of turbocharged V6s — that’s all we needed for 90 minutes of insanely intense racing.

You’ve probably already learned about what happened — George Russel, who’d been absolutely crushing it during qualifying, continued to crush it during the race. Lewis Hamilton, who had been struggling due to rear grip issues, did what Hamilton does: He kicked major butt, arriving in second place. The beloved Carlos Sainz, who had done great in quals, rounded up the podium.

British Racer Lando Norris, who was really the only one who could have taken the driver’s championship trophy from Max Verstappen, ended up in sixth, just behind Max. He needed to beat Max by three points to stay in contention, meaning Max ended up taking home the trophy, as many expected:

I walked back to the hotel with my eBay Motors friends, and saw fireworks erupt, first over the stadium, and then all over the city:

I Was An Imposter, But A Welcome Imposter

I grew up in an army family, moving around every 2-3 years. This was pretty stressful for my brothers and me, as being the “new kid” at school all the time was honestly terrifying. But the truth is, nothing was more terrifying to me than going to college at an out-of-state, state-school. You see, when I was in elementary and high school, I was a new-kid among new-kids. Everyone was in the same boat; their parents had been stationed at that base sometime in the last couple of years, and plenty of them were brand new, just like I was. This opened everyone up to making new friends instead of clique-ing up, because everyone knew they, too, had been the “new kid” not long ago.

College felt different; the kids at the University of Virginia were coming in with friends they’d had since childhood, and here I was, a kid from a public school in Kansas, all alone. Never have I felt less welcome than my freshman year of college.

The Las Vegas Grand Prix reminded me more of my army-brat experiences in that, yes, I had no clue what the hell was going on — I didn’t know the drivers, I didn’t know the teams, I didn’t know the cars, I definitely didn’t know any of the engineers/technicians, I didn’t know many of the rules, I didn’t know the tracks; I knew nothing. But it becomes clear to anyone attending a Formula 1 race just how enormous an influence Netflix’s Drive To Survive has had on the rapid growth of the sport stateside.

So many people told me they had only gotten into F1 in the last couple of years, and the level of enthusiasm with which they taught me new things about the sport is something I’d never experienced before. More than anything, I noticed that most people didn’t just want to tell me about the teams and cars and rules and standings and other race-related facts — they wanted to tell me about the drivers. They wanted to tell me all about who was the underdog, who was a nice guy and who was a villain, who had screwed whom, who had which wife, what nice things they’ve done in their personal lives, what scandals they’d been involved in, and on and on.

It was clear that one Netflix show had gotten many thousands of Americans to invest in the people behind the sport, and not simply the sport itself. It’s something I’ve learned during my time as a car journalist — you want people to see you not as some faceless entity but as an organization of individuals with different personalities, flaws, and dreams.

This ultra-humanized sport had drawn in so many people from all walks of life, and though many of the folks at the race were all fairly well-off (since they could drop a grand on a race), they were far from gatekeepers. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that, if you’re trying to get into a major sport in 2024, F1 may be the most welcoming of them all.

Topshot image credit: F1