My wife and I saw the F1 experience at the Grand Prix Plaza in Vegas last Friday.
- The merch...oh, hell no. The biggest ripoff of the whole thing. Wildly overpriced (70 dollars for a HAT?!) and worst of all? Most of it was last year's merch! 2024 merchandise at wildly inflated prices, who wouldn't plunk down their CC to buy some of that?
- Sims were free that weekend, otherwise they were 30-40 dollars for 6 laps around the Vegas course. Auto-transmission only, on track red/green braking and acceleration cues, decent force feedback on the brakes, acceleration and deceleration, and a very faithful reconstruction of the track and surrounding hotels and whatnot. Worth the money? By Vegas' inflated standards, yes. Elsewhere...maybe?
- The F1X took about an hour to walk through. You could spend 2 hours there digging and digging into all of the displays. The pit wall interactive setup was really, really cool. F1TV only shows a fraction of the radio chatter, so when you see drivers complaining about their race engineers talking too much, that's because there is SOOOO much going on we never hear.
- The tire change portion was kind of "meh" and the cool down room portion was cringey as fuck. Horrible. Embarrasing for F1 to think that was a good idea in its current execution.
- History...holy shit, the history on display. The lobby has Alonso's F138 for the 2013 season. F1X has The Ferrari 156 from 1961, Andretti's Lotus 80 from 1979, Vettell's RB7 from 2011, and Alonso's AMR23 from 2023. The cars, not mockups, the actual cars. There are a number of reproduction uniforms and helmets on display (those are marked), but also actual, worn helmets and jerseys on display (also marked). Some of the helmets still have bug splatters and flecks of dirt on the unused tearoffs. Trophies, car parts, engines, well-done displays about iconic cars and how they changed the sport were available. The room was also well designed with the cars in the middle and a chronological history in displays running counterclockwise from the room's entrance. I spent most of my time in this room alone.
- You can design your own car livery and team. That was really well done, but the colors and sponsors were really weak. Cool feature as part of the experience, but it needs some depth and a better color palette. Sure, teal and cobalt go together and who doesn't want an all purple car with neon blue highlights?
Great history lesson, really cool interactive features for both the history and modern F1. The tire change room wasn't bad but it wasn't great. The cooldown room made my group of 3 wildly uncomfortable, so I hope that improves.
3.5 out of 5 Adrian Newey's, maybe 4 out of 5 Ross Brawn's. I'd go again though.
