Formula One on the right track in Vegas after parking lot past

LAS VEGAS – Bernie Ecclestone, the one-time supremo who twice took Formula One to a Caesars Palace parking lot in the 1980s, accepts the sport is finally on the right track the third time around in Las Vegas.

The 93-year-old Briton would still not want to bet on the race’s long-term success, however.

Red Bull’s dominant triple world champion Max Verstappen and his rivals will be speeding down the famed Strip on Saturday, past the lit-up landmark casinos and hotels, in a night-time spectacular.

Ecclestone told Reuters by telephone from his ranch in Brazil that it was the layout he had always wanted and never got.

“The only problem last time was we couldn’t run on the Strip, which is what I wanted to do,” he said. “I wanted to make sure when somebody turned their television on, they knew they were in Vegas, not in the desert. They promised me ‘yes, we can do it’.

“The first year we ran in this area, which was Caesars Palace car park, or part of it, but it was on the understanding that the following year we’d be able to do what I had in mind.

“But it never happened because the people in Vegas, all the hotels, couldn’t see that it was going to be any good for them.

“So that’s why we never went back to Vegas (after 1982).”

This time, the race will be the third in the United States this season, after stadium-centred Miami and Austin’s purpose-built Circuit of the Americas.

The race is set to be a sell-out and F1 and sponsors are pulling out all the stops and spending big to attract the high-rollers and A-listers.

“I hope it is (a success) but I’m not sure it’s long term,” said Ecclestone. “I think the last thing they are concerned with is the race itself.

“Most likely, there will be as big a crowd as you can get, this time around.

“Whether it will hang on, especially with some of the prices... why would people pay this sort of money to be in Vegas when they can go to Austin and everything is much, much better and much easier?

“They’ve got a bit of a battle. I hope they win but I wouldn’t want to put my money on it.”

The season-ending 1981 and 1982 races, held amid the concrete expanse of a hotel and casino car park, hardly fired the imagination.

“F1 didn’t take to Vegas, it was mutual,” recalled journalist Nigel Roebuck 30 years later in Motor Sport magazine.

“Not many of the local populace had the remotest interest in the race, even situated as it was in the middle of town; fewer still bought tickets.”

Roebuck also quoted Australian Alan Jones, the 1980 world champion who was retiring after winning the 1981 race, as saying: “What a bloody place to be ending your career.” REUTERS