00:00 Hello and welcome to F1 Briefings, my name is Alex Hampton and to my right I have Lydia
00:04 Mee.
00:05 Now, the first evening of the Las Vegas Grand Prix was dramatic to say the least.
00:10 There's been complaints from fans that they were only able to watch 8 minutes of the action
00:16 between practice 1 and practice 2.
00:18 Now, yes, we've talked about the negative responses here, but let's talk about Toto
00:25 Wolff.
00:26 In the team interviews, he was almost angry.
00:31 He showed a passion I haven't seen in him since Abu Dhabi 2021.
00:35 He was adamant that we should still be incredibly positive about Las Vegas.
00:39 Let's talk about that right now.
00:40 Yeah, I mean, partly I do agree.
00:43 It's a huge event to put on and they have made it happen.
00:47 F1 is unpredictable.
00:49 You never know when you pay for a ticket, whatever circuit you're on, you could run
00:54 into a red flag and then the whole thing is finished.
00:57 But I think the upset was partly from the communication because the fans had to sit
01:02 there for five hours only to be told, actually, you're not going to see anything today.
01:06 You've got to go home.
01:08 So that doesn't sit right with a lot of people.
01:12 Also, Vegas is such a huge spectacle.
01:15 They put so much effort into the opening ceremony, which was amazing.
01:19 But actually that did push back the track inspection.
01:22 Yes, and I think that's what happened.
01:24 I mean, a photographer, a photographer, a knowledgeable and experienced photographer,
01:28 but a photographer actually identified an issue with these drain covers a number of
01:33 days before the before anything this weekend started.
01:37 If a photographer who's it's not his job to pick up these these issues, they should have
01:41 had someone looking around the track.
01:43 You know, they said they did high speed testing.
01:45 And I know this has been part of F1 before.
01:48 We've seen things like this before.
01:51 But that's the issue, isn't it?
01:52 Toto Wolf said in the team conference that yes, they can now identify the problem and
01:56 stop it happening in the future.
01:58 It's already happened, Toto.
02:00 This shouldn't be a narrative that occurs in F1 races anymore, especially on a track
02:05 that has just been built.
02:07 The people of Las Vegas have been pushed around for almost a year now.
02:10 They should be giving them the best experience of their lives right now.
02:15 I think as well, I understand he's saying this is only free practice, but the ticket
02:21 prices are very expensive for this weekend.
02:23 A lot of the fans were saying to media after they've been taken out of their seat that
02:30 I only could afford to come for practice.
02:32 And then they're going to fly home and I've only seen eight minutes.
02:36 So I can see why they're upset.
02:38 I can also see why Toto's like, look, it's practice.
02:41 We have three of them.
02:43 James Vowles, as Toto said, put it way more eloquently than he did.
02:48 He's swearing.
02:50 He said, judge us after the race on Saturday, which is fair.
02:54 But I also think let's let the people be angry.
02:57 I think that's valid.
02:59 They've spent their hard earned money.
03:01 And I'd be actually very interested to see what Toto Wolff would have said if it was
03:04 one of his cars and one of his drivers that was put in that level of danger.
03:09 Or if Carlos Sainz, luckily he was fine and he wasn't hurt.
03:13 But he was injured.
03:14 It's a different story if he was injured from that.
03:16 Yeah.
03:17 So let's look ahead.
03:18 Positively going into the Vegas Grand Prix.
03:20 There's so many good things to take from this race.
03:23 The conditions are going to be interesting.
03:25 They now have the track under control.
03:27 Look, it's going to be an exciting race.
03:30 I'm looking forward to it.
Comments