Las Vegas Strip Circuit · Las Vegas
50 laps · 6.201 km per lap · Pirelli C3 Hard / C4 Medium / C5 Soft
The Las Vegas Strip Circuit runs straight down the middle of the world's most famous casino boulevard, past the Bellagio fountains and the Sphere, under floodlights that make the desert night feel like daylight. It's one of the fastest street circuits on the calendar, built around several very long straights connected by a handful of tight 90-degree corners.
The defining physical fact of the race is temperature — or the lack of it. Held in late November, Las Vegas is a genuine desert-night race: ambient temperatures can drop into the high teens Celsius, unusually cold for Formula 1, and track temperature falls even further once the sun is down for the entire session. Cold tarmac makes generating and holding tyre temperature a real challenge, especially in the opening laps of a stint.
The circuit is wide by street-circuit standards, which combined with several long straights gives a moderate overtaking score — braking zones at the end of each straight are genuine passing opportunities if a driver can get close enough.
Pirelli brings the C3 Hard, C4 Medium and C5 Soft. Degradation is only moderate on the smooth, modern tarmac, but the cold conditions mean the bigger challenge is getting the tyres into their working temperature window at all, rather than managing wear once they're there.
The Hard's biggest weakness at Las Vegas is the cold — it can take longer than usual to switch on, making an out-lap on this compound a genuine risk if traffic or a Safety Car catches a driver with cold tyres.
A common starting tyre for drivers outside the top ten, striking a reasonable balance between outright pace and the warm-up challenge posed by the cold track.
Q3 runners start on the Soft, which — helpfully — is also the easiest compound to get into its working window on a cold track, making it the safer choice for the opening laps regardless of pure pace considerations.
Las Vegas rewards a different skill set to most circuits: managing tyre temperature rather than just tyre wear. A driver who loses track position on a cold out-lap — sliding wide under braking before the tyres have switched on — can lose more time in the first two laps of a stint than they'd ever recover through the rest of it.
The long straights make this a genuine overtaking circuit by street-circuit standards, with real passing chances into the tight corners that follow each one. That makes Las Vegas one of the few street circuits where committing to an aggressive strategy — rather than just defending track position — can pay off.
Because the whole session runs at night on a public road with little rubber laid down beforehand, grip can also shift noticeably as the weekend progresses, similar to other street circuits, but compounded here by the cold.
The default plan: run the Medium into the pit window, then switch to the Hard for a stint that comfortably reaches the flag — with extra care on out-laps to manage the cold-tyre risk.
For Q3 runners on the Soft. Because the Soft warms up fastest, this is also a reasonable choice for any driver worried about being caught cold in traffic early on.
Given the genuine overtaking chances into the braking zones after each long straight, strategies here can afford to prioritise pace over pure track-position defence — a driver with a tyre-age advantage has real chances to use it.
The multiple long straights at Las Vegas make it one of the most boost-hungry circuits on the calendar — full deployment down each one is essential to both lap time and overtaking chances into the following braking zone.
The tight 90-degree corners that connect the straights are the main harvesting opportunities. With so much straight-line running, energy management here is less about finding harvest zones and more about making sure deployment is spread evenly across every straight rather than exhausted on the first one.
Build your strategy for the Strip in PITWALL — manage cold tyres on the out-lap, attack the long straights, and see if your strategy holds up under the desert lights.
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