The last Saturday Grand Prix in Formula 1 was in 1985 and the visit
to Kyalami in South Africa. Fast forward 38 years, and F1 is
gearing up for a 22:00 local time Saturday night start time for the
Las Vegas Grand Prix, but why is a run of 680 Sunday races being
broken? Well, put simply, it is down to the timezone of Las Vegas.
It is eight hours behind Greenwich Mean Time of the UK, and nine
behind Central European Time. That means if the race began at 22:00
on Sunday night, it would be a 06:00 Monday morning start in the
UK, 07:00 in the rest of Europe – just when everyone is getting up
and getting ready to go to work. It is a 01:00 start on the East
Coast of America, with an earlier start time in Las Vegas, meaning
a potential start time in the early hours, perhaps 02:00 or 03:00
in the UK, with a large chunk of that audience probably preferring
to watch the highlights or a re-run. The race weekend is
essentially running on a similar schedule to the Japanese Grand
Prix, with a day-time race in Nevada ruled out as the idea was for
a primetime race down the Strip.
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