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Formula 1 drivers are bracing themselves for a "pretty nasty" and "not fun" experience if track action is impacted by rain at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
An unusual run of poor weather in the region means the build up to this weekend’s F1 event has been marred by rain, with flash flooding impacting the city on Tuesday following a particular heavy downfall.
Current forecasts predict more wet weather is on the way with a chance of rain impacting second practice on Thursday night and there's potential for that to roll into Friday's action.
It is a scenario that drivers are not particularly relishing, with several of them saying that the first time running in the wet in Vegas is not something to be looked forward to.
Yuki Tsunoda predicted that things would get “spicy” if the rain arrived, while world championship leader Lando Norris said there were a host of elements that made it especially challenging.
“I think it’ll be an incredibly difficult track in the rain, yeah, pretty nasty, I think,” said the McLaren driver. “It's going to be a hell of a challenge.
“Obviously not a lot of room for errorm, quite tricky and quite quick in terms of being a street circuit.
“You've got the white lines, all the paint and stuff, which is pretty horrible at times when you’re in the car feeling these kinds of things. It will be a pretty insane challenge if it stays wet, especially if it doesn't dry very quickly either because of the temperature.”
Why Vegas is so difficult
While the level of rain itself is not expected to be torrential, what makes drivers potentially nervous about what they will face are the unusual other circumstances that they have to deal with around the Las Vegas street circuit.
A combination of the asphalt and low temperatures means the track surface offers little grip, with tyre supplier Pirelli giving it the lowest score it can in its rankings of tracks throughout the season.
Also, the long straights at the Las Vegas venue mean that the cars have to run with minimal downforce, so are effectively running with Monza-levels of wings.
The track is very fast and narrow, so there is little room for error for when things do go wrong.
Fernando Alonso said about the prospect of driving in the rain here: “Not fun. Not fun at all.
“It's fast. Visibility is going to be a challenge, I think, under the lights. And also, the grip level is very low already on dry tyres. Temperature is low. So it could be fun to watch, but not to drive.”
The visibility issue, with varying light levels around the track, is something that Carlos Sainz has highlighted as being a particular issue for Las Vegas.
“For some reason, all drivers feel around this track, there's parts of the track that are quite dark, darker than Singapore, and all the night races that we go to,” he explained.
“And we don't really understand why, because the lighting should be the same. There's parts of the track that are darker than others, and with the rain could be particularly tricky.”
For a veteran like Lewis Hamilton, it's the difficult nature of getting tyres warmed up for the track that means the rain was a bigger headache than other venues.
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“It's going to be really hard if it's wet,” he said. “I mean this is probably the slipperiest track that we go to in terms of the grip we had in the last couple of years.
“Getting the tyres working here is very, very tough in these cool conditions. Obviously these tyres have a very narrow working window and that would be even worse obviously when it's on inters or extreme wets.”
