A one-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard, more prominently known as the Las Vegas Strip, will be doubling as a racetrack on November 23 when the 2024 Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix takes place. The street track, which is 3.8 miles long in its entirety, made its debut last year. Drivers will once again take 50 laps at speeds well over 200 mph, whizzing past iconic Vegas landmarks like the Bellagio and Paris Las Vegas casino resorts.
An insane amount of work goes into setting up for the race, including the installation of barricades, lighting, grandstands, and temporary pedestrian bridges. When the Las Vegas Grand Prix debuted last year, a massive infrastructure effort was also needed – to the tune of an estimated $560 million over the course of roughly nine months.
One major construction project was a 300,000-square-foot, multi-level pit building and hospitality venue at a price tag of nearly half a billion dollars. Additionally, paving crews had 3.8 miles of pedestrian roadway that needed to be transformed into an F1-caliber racetrack. That paving project alone, which included the efforts of local paving contractor Las Vegas Paving Corp., took nearly six months. The good news is that, because of the materials used and tight tolerances paving crews had to adhere to, the track is expected to have a life of at least six years before any significant repairs or repaving need to be done.
Not your ordinary street-paving job
An F1 racetrack is constructed much differently than a typical roadway. Fortunately, one of the most respected racetrack engineering firms in the world, German-based Tilke, designed the Las Vegas track. Additionally, Las Vegas Paving Corp. had experience paving racetracks before. The company’s portfolio of high-profile projects includes Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
“The specs of a Formula 1 track are much more stringent, which makes it a challenge for most contractors,” said Robert Rasmussen, Vice President & Chief Engineer of The Transtec Group, a pavement engineering firm. “Las Vegas Paving did the build. They did a great job, especially on the materials side.”
Rasmussen assisted Gazanfar Jafarli, Construction Manager & Asphalt Specialist at Tilke, in the design and construction of the Las Vegas street track. To construct the track, anywhere from 4 to 10 inches of existing asphalt needed to be removed. That was replaced with roughly 60,000 tons of an extremely dense base layer formulated for superior strength and durability in Las Vegas’ punishing desert climate. An additional 43,000 tons of asphalt was used to create a unique top layer of nearly 2 inches. That top layer needed to be exceptionally smooth and free of ripples, while also allowing for exceptional traction.
According to Rasmussen, unique aggregates from quarried stone were utilized due to their abrasion resistance, high-friction properties, and overall durability. Additionally, a specially formulated binder was used to provide the optimum balance of stiffness, elasticity, and resistance to intense temperatures. “The team also had to craft a mix design that balanced durability with the texture and grip needed to handle braking speeds of over 210 mph,” Rasmussen added.
For the paving crews to achieve the extraordinarily tight Formula 1 specs, some of the latest smart paving technologies were utilized. These technologies enabled operators to construct the more complex design of a Formula 1 track, ensure highly accurate placement of materials, pave with extremely tight tolerances, and ensure an unusually smooth surface layer that satisfied Formula 1 requirements.
Planning and teamwork are keys to success
As you might expect, a construction project of this magnitude – on one of the busiest streets in the world – could not happen without some disruption to everyday life. By and large, the paving work was completed at night to minimize some of those disruptions. Project planners said they’d learned a lot from last year’s race and had taken steps this year to better sequence the work needing to be done, making the entire three-month preparation process smoother and more predictable for the general public.
On another positive note, the track itself which was constructed in 2023 is expected to last at least six years. So that six-month process was off the table this year, and hopefully for several more.
“When I’d walked the track earlier this year, I didn’t see any significant repairs that would be needed,” said Tilke’s Gazanfar Jafarli. “That’s always difficult to say for sure until drivers are running circles on the track again after a year of traffic. But a good example (of a similar project) is the Baku City Circuit in Baku, Azerbaijan. That track has held up for eight years and seven F1 races without a repave.”
Regardless of how long the Las Vegas track can ultimately hold up, Rasmussen pointed out that tight collaboration between project planners, engineers, and paving crews is essential.
“This project's success is a testament to the dedicated leadership of Gazanfar Jafarli, Lawrence Sharp and Ryan Mendenhall (Las Vegas Paving), and Ron Anderson (Miller Project Management),” Rasmussen said. “Their expertise, coupled with a team embodying both experience and a willingness to embrace and implement innovative methods, was crucial.”
In other words, teamwork has been the formula for success in building this Formula 1 racetrack in the heart of Las Vegas.
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