Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen clash over Las Vegas GP track amid F1 chaos

After finally getting a taste of the Las Vegas Grand Prix street track, F1 stars Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen were left with contrasting impressions of what it’s like to drive on

After waiting until almost three in the morning to complete any meaningful laps, Lewis Hamilton was left thrilled by the Las Vegas Grand Prix track.

But his Formula 1 rival Max Verstappen was less impressed with the newly-built street circuit. In fact, his outlook on this whole event so far has rather given the impression that the champion would rather be anywhere in the world other than Sin City.

FP1 was cancelled after just eight minutes when Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari pulled a manhole cover out of the ground and caused extensive damage to the car. Not only did that drain need to be repaired, but the others dotted around the circuit had to be checked too.

Terrifying moment Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari is destroyed by drain cover at Las Vegas GP

That meant FP2 started two-and-a-half hours later than planned, at 2.30am local time. The fans that had initially stuck around had already been sent home by the time the on-track action finally got going for real, but even in their absence Hamilton had a ball.

“We are travelling at some serious speeds out there,” smiled the Mercedes star. “It’s incredibly fast and it’s a lot of fun, I had so much fun today. I’m so glad that we did get to run again. Obviously, not great in P1 and what happened, but they did a great job to fix it and yeah an interesting session.

“I had a blast, everyone is struggling with jet lag and all that stuff, and I feel great. I’m so glad that we did get to run again, and it is not great what happened but they did a great job to fix it. [The balance] is okay, it is not too bad. I think when we are all out on the soft tyres, we’re not too far off, and everyone is having graining and running out of tyres but everyone is in the same boat.

“We’re on really low downforce so you’re sliding a lot through a lot of the low-speed corners and also the high-speed corners quite a lot as you don’t have a huge amount of load. You need the straight line speed, and then the [low] temperatures I’m sure are having a big effect.”

Verstappen has already criticised all the events taking place off the track, moaning after Wednesday’s opening ceremony that he felt “like a clown”. But even after he had got down to his usual business he still didn’t seem all that enamoured with what this street circuit has to offer.

Asked what it was like to drive on, he replied: “Slippery! We didn’t run a lot in FP1 so it took time to rubber in a little more. In the end, it was better. We managed to do the whole programme which, I guess, is most important for today.

And when pressed on whether he had enjoyed it, he replied: “No, no. I’ve had better tracks in my life. I said that yesterday. There is nothing new that I’ve discovered. We just get on with it.”