2024 Las Vegas GP preview: Does Ferrari have a winning hand?

This weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix not only marks the start of a season-ending triple header, but it could also be the site of an F1 coronation, with Max Verstappen on the cusp of a fourth consecutive drivers’ world championship.

Following a brilliant drive in Sao Paulo, the Dutchman now leads Lando Norris by 62 points in the drivers’ standings. Should the Briton fail to outscore him by three points or more, Verstappen will be free to celebrate his latest title success late into the Las Vegas night.

But breezing to victory is unlikely to be easy for Verstappen or Red Bull, with Ferrari and McLaren both possessing the pace to contend for the top step.

All three of the top teams are still in the hunt for the constructors’ title and an impressive performance in Las Vegas could hand one of them the advantage, before F1 travels to the Middle East for the final two rounds of the season.

However, could the cold air of the Nevada desert throw a spanner in the works? Or could the addition of a Ferrari Challenge support race create an even slippier racing surface?

Here’s everything you need to watch out for over the course of the 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend.

Can Ferrari go one better in 2024? 

Ferrari is one of only three current teams, including Williams and McLaren, that have appeared in every Las Vegas Grand Prix. They were there in 1981 and 1982, when the world championship went racing in the parking lot of the Caesars Palace hotel, and remained on the grid for last year’s return.

But aside from a dazzling qualifying lap from Gilles Villeneuve in ’81 — which was good enough for third — no trips to the Nevada desert have ever been very prosperous for the Scuderia. Until 2023.

In almost poetic fashion, F1’s most decorated constructor set the Las Vegas Boulevard alight in qualifying last year: locking out the front row with the two fastest times in qualifying — four-tenths clear of Verstappen’s dominant Red Bull.

Although Carlos Sainz later received a ten-place engine penalty — forced upon him after he collided with a drain cover in FP1 — hopes for a Las Vegas victory remained high with Charles Leclerc starting from pole. But after a mid-race strategy error, which saw Ferrari fail to pit him under safety car conditions while Verstappen and Sergio Perez did, Ferrari saw its chances for victory slip away and Leclerc had to settle for a runners-up spot.

If the Scuderia can remain mistake free in 2024, its Las Vegas GP story could be very different.

After wins in Austin and Mexico City, Ferrari looks to be McLaren’s closest current competitor in terms of outright performance. Both Leclerc and Sainz have shown strong pace at other high-speed circuits such as Baku and Monza.

Leclerc in particular is one of the favourites for an overall victory, having finished on the podium in six out of the last eight races.

He is also only 24 points adrift of Lando Norris in the drivers’ standings; a win in Las Vegas could not only increase the pressure on the Briton’s runners-up spot, but also help close the 36-point gap to McLaren in the constructors’ standings.

Will the cold air create chaos? 

Las Vegas looks on course to host the coldest grand prix of the year, with the temperature for Sunday’s race forecast to be 12C.

That’s chiller than Silverstone where, in the best British summer tradition, a 14.4C air temperature was recorded during this year’s British Grand Prix, which was partly due to wet weather.

This weekend the skies are expected to be clear, which is likely to see drivers sliding around on their slick tyres and struggling to get heat into their brakes — as they did last year in 12C conditions as well.

The start of the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix provided a perfect example for what effect the cold air can have. As the field hurtled into Turn 1, many struggled to slow their cars down sufficiently. Fernando Alonso seemingly had no grip at all, as he attempted to dive down the inside of Pierre Gasly but instead span into traffic.

Later in the race, Charles Leclerc nearly lost his Ferrari in a desperate attempt to generate heat in his tyres while trailing the safety car. When racing eventually went green, many more drivers continued to complain about the lack of grip.

The first practice session on Friday is forecast to run in 15C temperatures, dropping to 12C for the later FP2 session. Qualifying is predicted to take place in 14C conditions.

A pink Alpine 

Alpine will be running a bright pink livery for the final three races of 2024, starting in Las Vegas, in celebration of its title partnership with BWT.

The custom colourway will ensure that Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon fit in with Sin City’s neon lit landscape, but the question is whether we’ll see it continue the team’s run of positive results.

Alpine has had a season of meteoric highs and colossal lows, and has struggled for performance for the majority of the current campaign. After securing a miraculous double podium in Brazil, the team has suddenly found itself sixth in the constructors’ standings — a jump which could be worth upwards of $50m in prize money should it be able to hold onto it.

Last year’s Las Vegas GP offers a glimmer of hope as Gasly qualified inside the top ten while Ocon later finished fourth after starting from 16th on the grid — pulling off a brilliant one-stop strategy. But a repeat performance seems unlikely, especially given Alpine’s performance on dry weather race weekends so far this season.

In the 20 races prior to Brazil, Alpine scored just 14 points. Meanwhile, midfield rivals Haas scored 46 — even with one of its drivers, Kevin Magnussen, was absent and replaced by rookie Oliver Bearman for races in Azerbaijan and Sao Paulo — and RB scored 36.

With both teams only trailing Alpine by three and six points respectively, all indications suggest that the Enstone outfit is going to have a hard time in defending its lucrative spot in the constructors’ standings.

Could the Ferrari Challenge cause trouble? 

Formula 1 will be supported by another series this year in Las Vegas, with the Ferrari Challenge set to hit the The Strip for a singular practice session, qualifying and two races.

The sessions will be intertwined with F1’s own, meaning that trackside fans will see more wheel-to-wheel action across the weekend, but the 15 GT machines will have their own impact on the track surface.

While the circuit will be cleaned between sessions, it’s common for support series to cause significant fluctuations in the amount of grip found in each session, meaning drivers could be treading a fine line at the end of qualifying, trying to be the very last car over the line to benefit from maximum grip.

For the full weekend schedule, click here.

The Sphere returns 

The $2.3bn (£1.8bn) Sphere was a central component to the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend, with its 2.1 billion pixels creating a gigantic billboard for Formula 1, while the field thundered past and around it.

But race organisers are attempting to step it up a notch in 2024, with drivers and team bosses asked to react as their cars drive by — potentially resulting in some very meme-able moments over the course of the weekend.

As Chris Medland wrote for Motor Sport, team members were asked to record different emotions and gestures at COTA.

“One such idea is for them to gesticulate and the Sphere appear to break, which led to the unusual scenario of Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack trying to create a crack,” he said in his Motor Sport diary. “It’s always an awkward feeling having to act out unnatural movements for the camera, and on being encouraged to really commit to it Krack joked: ‘I just wanted to be an engineer!'”