In reply to crankwalk (Forum Supporter) :
Yeah that seems like a raw deal. I do like the FIA's steadfast holding to the rules because I think it cuts down on shenanigans. I am remembering the Vettle less than 1l of fuel deal and the plank issue (although I don't understand why they don't check the other planks). However in this case the track the FIA provided clearly and acutely destroyed those parts of a car, why is the competitor penalized so heavily for that.
To me, rules like that are to make sure dumb mistakes are not taken advantage of. Or even subtle mistakes.
But how is driving over a metal cover that was supposed to be secure the driver's fault? It's not as if the damage was accumulated over lots of laps and the drivers would have known about it.
Tom1200 said:In reply to MiniDave :
I can address the negativity as I am probably one of the negative ones.
I believe it's two two fold:
1. I think long time F1 followers feel likely they are tarting up something that doesn't need tarting up but this is what Vegas does.
2. As a 45 year Vegas resident I can tell you with certainty that Las Vegas has Jan Brady disease; she's every bit as hot as Marsha but try's to hard. Las Vegas is always on about wanting to be a world class destination but we already are.
For me personally the race doesn't work because A. I'm cheap and B. I don't want to get home at 2 AM.
I have several SCCA friends that are working it and I think they will enjoy themselves.
Now I can't remember the show I was watching, but it said that Macau brings in 6x the revenue that Vegas does.
Score for the track 1 Ferrari and 1 Alpine. Plus you get penalized for the track killing your car.
FIA should have to reimburse Ferrari & Alpine for the crap track.
I stayed up to try to watch FP1, but didn't watch FP2. Watching FP2 this morning as work starts. Apparently, the stewards agreed with Ferrari, but said their hands were tied because they have to follow the regulations. After some previous years of questionable calls, I can understand them trying to stick to the rules.
The Stewards note that if they had the authority to grant a derogation in what they consider in this
case to be mitigating, unusual and unfortunate circumstances, they would have done so, however the
regulations do not allow such action.
-Rob
They cleared out all the spectators before FP2. Can you imagine paying a bunch of money to watch practice and all you get is 9 minutes of FP1 and none of FP2? This race is turning into a E36 M3 show and I'm glad I didn't spend a bunch of money to see it live
In reply to rob_lewis :
I saw that and I think that is fair. The FAI needs to step in and say yep this rule needs to be ammended at a minimum to open up the spending cap to account for this damage.
In reply to loosecannon :
So they didn't let the ticket holders back in for FP2?? I can see making sure the spectators were paying ticket holders. Session holders are session holders... It sucks, and is incredibly inefficient for the spectators. But it sure makes money.
So I was watching FP2 highlights on the Formula 1 Tube of U's channel. And they were hyping up the Vegas part of the show by checking out the teams' homage to Vegas.
On Alfa Romeo- they pointed out that the four leaf clover on Bottas' drivers suit was part of that. Except it isn't. It's a Quadrifoglio (which technically does mean 4 leaf), and has been a racing symbol for Alfa Romeo for almost 100 years. The only "homage" to vegas is that it's gold instead of green.
Do these people have no history background of the teams?
So I will say this, I want this to be successful, I love racing, and F1 so I am not routing against this by any means.
The memes are out of this world funny. You can't make up this kind of material. I won't post them all here but feel free to go peruse the Formula Dank Reddit.
alfadriver said:In reply to loosecannon :
So they didn't let the ticket holders back in for FP2?? I can see making sure the spectators were paying ticket holders. Session holders are session holders... It sucks, and is incredibly inefficient for the spectators. But it sure makes money.
I'm not there, so just reading things across news/internet, but apparently it's because they didn't have enough staff to manage the people beyond the original 1:30 stop time. I heard it had something to do with contract rules and F1 not planning ahead of time for a "if practice gets delayed". I wonder how busy the credit card companies are right now getting calls about chargebacks for "services not paid for".
It really sucks all the way around. I'm excited about F1 in Vegas as I was hoping (and still am) it would be an awesome event, but these initial teething problems are a big blow. Hopefully, all the big issues behind them and the rest of the race goes on with minimal drama. F1 has invested a bunch in this race, only time will tell if it hurts next years sales or if they make major changes to ensure it doesn't. COTA had a decent turnout the first year and then it dropped for the next few, but seems to have picked back up. Fingers crossed the same happens for Vegas (and Miami).
-Rob
Just saw a video about Vegas airports charging $3000 for landing of all planes. Which is a huge amount. They have lowered it to $750 for smaller planes recently- but apparently that is also a huge amount of fees. They did a big increase to $500 when the Sphere opened up, claiming that there would be more traffic- but in fact the traffic was down a lot.
Since the fees are a county thing- more like toll road fees, this seems that the local county wants to milk some money out of this weekend. For what, I don't know- it's not as if they have shareholders and have to maximize profits. Pilots are demanding transparency to justify the fees.
I, too, want to see this race go over well, but geez.
NY Nick said:So I will say this, I want this to be successful, I love racing, and F1 so I am not routing against this by any means.
The memes are out of this world funny. You can't make up this kind of material. I won't post them all here but feel free to go peruse the Formula Dank Reddit.
A few highlights:
What a bunch of whiners you all are! 
Yes, it's not a good start to the weekend, but give it a chance. Personally, I'm happy that F1 is back for a third F1 race in the US. Yes, prices are high, but do you think they are reasonable for the Super Bowl or some other major sporting event? That is just the way the world works.
It is a very raw deal for Sainz. I read that the FIA looked very hard to find a way to NOT penalize Ferrari for replacing the parts, but the rules are written in an air-tight way. They'll probably have to amend the rules for something like this happening.
In reply to RacerBoy75 :
F1 isn't the Super Bowl, and this is just another race- one that's actually less meaningful because the championship has been decided already. So this *should* be more like a regular season FB game, not even a playoff game.
While it's great that there's a third race, it's just anther where it's cheaper to fly to Belgium and go to Spa than Miami or Las Vegas, so how great it is happens to be rather qualified.
Let alone the timing of the race means you have to stay up late to watch it. Again, it's less meaningful thanks to the championship.
It would be cool to be great, but it's so inaccessable to the nominal F1 fan.
If only F1 had run a street course before where they had manhole cover problems, and knew to tack weld them in place for the race weekend...
racerfink said:If only F1 had run a street course before where they had manhole cover problems, and knew to tack weld them in place for the race weekend...
They were welded, the concrete around them failed.
The issue with sending spectators home was because of the permits. They were only good till 1:30AM....oops.
Did Sly not teach us anything........you need to swerve & duck when you see the manhole covers coming.
So we're here in Vegas, and we drove down the strip yesterday. My wife is a total construction nerd, and when we stopped by a water valve cover near the Bellagio she took a picture of it.
So here's a GRM exclusive, a close pic of the sort of cover that failed, taken earlier that day, by someone with a quarter century of road construction experience starting with testing. Seriously, she was really excited about this.
She took the picture because she was impressed with how smooth and flush it was, but looking at the pic later she thinks it was nicked by the milling machine. That's asphalt around it, btw, not concrete. Note that it's not welded down either, it's hanging on by a cast iron lip underneath. The white "concrete" in other pics is failed asphalt according to her.
rob_lewis said:I stayed up to try to watch FP1, but didn't watch FP2. Watching FP2 this morning as work starts. Apparently, the stewards agreed with Ferrari, but said their hands were tied because they have to follow the regulations. After some previous years of questionable calls, I can understand them trying to stick to the rules.
It sucks for Sainz and is unfair. OTOH, is it any more fair to Norris (3 points ahead of Sainz) to let Sainz have a penalty-free brand new power unit with 15-20 extra hp and no worries about reliability at this stage of the season?
Rules are rules and I'm glad the race officials are not deciding that they're free to ignore ones they don't like.
That is awesome that she wanted to take a picture and it turned out the be THE one that failed!! What does she mean by nicked by the milling machine? If you hadn't said it was welded, I would have thought that glob of metal above the R in water was the tack weld they put on to keep it down. I've never seen how they weld covers for a track. Do they seam weld the entire thing or just tack weld a few places? I'd assume they were just tack welded to make it easier to remove post race.
-Rob
In reply to rob_lewis :
I just saw another pic of the failed one, there's a road marking near it. So this isn't the one that failed but it's probably within a few dozen feet.
She said that the bit at about 11 o'clock shows damage from the milling. Turns out the milling people hate that, so usually they sink these down slightly to avoid it. Also, the ring around the outside is only partially covered.
That does look like it might be a weld, it's hard to tell. If it was a short bit of weld, I can see that tearing the ring as the cover came off. Seeing a pic of the failed one, the inner retaining lip has some damage. So that cracked and then the cover tore the ring at a weld as it came out. That seems plausible and matched the damage. Basically, it needed a second weld at the leading edge and not just the trailing.
She said that if they were welded down, the easiest thing to do would be to cut the asphalt again and just remove the cap and the riser ring as one unit.
Loads of F1 people walking around town. It's impossible to see the track without a ticket other than one escalator at T12. Driving down the Strip was pretty wild. We're going to see if we can get near the cars tonight just to hear the noise, but we won't be able to see anything.
Instead of going to FP1, we went to the Neon Museum. Two thumbs up.
More from Janel: repair looks like the risers were cut out, the hole plugged and then a skim coat of asphalt. There might have been some epoxy, she can't find that pic again.
Let's hope nobody in Vegas has a water problem that requires access to a shutoff valve :)
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