It isn’t often that crowds aren’t shoulder to shoulder at Bellagio’s popular conservatory display on a Saturday night.
Or that there aren’t long lines at the hotel’s front desk.
Or that the minimum bet at a blackjack table is $5,000.
But it also isn’t often that cars are whizzing along Las Vegas Boulevard at more than 200 mph.
The hustle and bustle that is a typical Saturday night at Bellagio hit a pause button at 10 p.m. That’s when the green flag dropped for the city’s second Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix.
“It’s really kinda weird,” said Henderson resident Tim Lewis who wanted to try to catch a glimpse of the race and missed out on getting into the Bellagio Fountain Club seating after it sold out.
Instead, he took advantage of the light crowds inside the casino and enjoyed the conservatory’s holiday display.
Maya and Taku Hirose, visiting from Tokyo, asked for their picture to be taken at the display. They’re staying another five days in Las Vegas before heading home and planned their trip here not knowing that Formula One was being staged on the Strip.
Outside, under the porte cochere, traffic was minimal, but people milling around the landscaped grounds were craning their necks to try to see what was happening on the Strip as they heard the sounds of F1 cars thundering off the walls of the resorts across the street. Most of the prime free viewing areas along the boulevard were long staked out before the race began.
The roar of the race was punctuated by the rhythmic chop of a helicopter hovering overhead.
In the casino, traffic was light as well. Seating at the piano lounge off the lobby was nearly full, but several table game seats in the casino were empty. It wasn’t clear whether the light casino traffic was the result of the excitement that was going on outside just 300 feet to the east or if players were scared off by table minimums that ranged from $500 to $5,000.
About an hour into the race, a wave of pedestrian traffic paraded through Bellagio. The Adele concert next door at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace had just let out and people were making their way back to their hotel rooms. It was one of the few headliner shows that didn’t go dark in the face of F1.
A couple that didn’t share their names took a rest at one of the nooks with tables in a Bellagio corridor.
“We just saw Adele … she was great,” the woman said.
They, too, said they were unaware that Formula One was going on when they bought their Adele tickets.
Another wave of well-dressed Adele fans carrying merch bags made their way through the corridor.
After a lull, the F1 crowd was back in their team gear, celebrating either the Mercedes team’s one-two finish led by George Russell or Max Verstappen’s fourth straight championship, which he won in Vegas after accumulating enough points in the standings that he can’t be caught.
Organizers of the race have promised to begin removing light standards and barricades as early as Sunday and F1 will become a memory until November 2025.
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.
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