My experience in a hospitality suite for F1 Vegas

I bought last minute tickets to the Las Vegas Gran Prix which took place on November 18, 2023. I waited about a week before the race to buy tickets, because as everyone knows, the initial prices were crazy. I was lucky because prices subsequently fell. On top of that, the venue I booked, Heritage South, was cancelled and I was upgraded to an even better venue, F1 Hospitality Lounge, for free. As this was my first F1 race, I think that information for first timers like me needs to be improved.

I was confused by all the various ticket options and venues. Here is what I wished I knew, before I bought the tickets:

Basically, the best venue is the Paddock Club. This is located on the start/finish line and includes the best food and open bar. You also get access to, and a view of, the garages. After this, there are various hospitality suites, located at various points on the track, each with different perks and viewpoints.

At all the casinos we visited, there was some sort of F1 display. Here was a Red Bull car at the Wynn:

Getting to the venue – There are various ways to get from your hotel to the venue where you will be watching the race. We stayed at the Hilton Resort World because that was the only place that had reasonable rates, and didn’t require a minimum stay like our usual place, the Wynn, had that weekend. In order to avoid traffic, we chose to walk from the hotel the the Convention Center monorail station (about 20 minutes) and then take the monorail to Flamingo station, and then walk about 5 minutes to the venue. If you buy the monorail tickets online, you will save a bit of $ versus buying at the station.

Access – If you buy a ticket to a hospitality suite, you will need two basic things to access the venue: 1. a ticket and 2. a credential. The ticket will be sent to you digitally through Ticketmaster. This allows you to gain access to your “zone”. Within each zone, there are various hospitality suites. This is where your credential comes in. It will allow you access to the proper hospitality suite, as well as control what areas of the suite you can access. For example, for our venue, we were able to access floors 1 and 2, but not 3.

Venue – Once I got to the venue, all my concerns about overpaying for tickets, access problems etc all went away. The place exceeded my expectations. I thought that the furniture and set up were well done. It did not seem cheap.

The food was also very high quality with lobster, steak, homemade pasta (with fresh shaved black truffle), salmon, and various desserts being served.

Also, bottled water and the open bar drinks were abundant and there was never any wait for a drink (one of my concerns is that they would overbook the venue).

I should also mention that the SERVICE IN THE VENUE WAS INCREDIBLE! Servers would come around frequently to ask if we needed anything and clear dishes. There was never a missed order, no matter how busy it seemed. I was very very impressed by the service (in general, all the staff I encountered were well trained and very pleasant to deal with; there are a lot of people standing outside with “ask me” signs – every time I asked for directions, they knew where everything was and explained it so well).

Seating – Going back to the venue, basically, inside is where all the food and seating for eating and drinking is located. Outside, is where you can watch the race. There were two rows of fold down seats. This was how close we were to the track:

One tip with the seating is that it is unassigned so you should arrive early to get a good spot. Basically, we went right when the venue opened and half the seats were already saved ( I don’t know if its allowed or not but people placed jackets and other personal items on the seats to save them; we did that as well). There were two rows of seats. Obviously, you want to be in the front.

Other thing to do; AMEX Hospitality – You may be wondering what there is to do besides the race. As mentioned above, we got to the race at 6PM, but it didn’t start until 10PM. Not to worry, there is a lot to do. Other than eating and drinking, within each zone, there are photo opportunities, and other things to look at. Our suite would also have various speakers. Another thing we did was sign up for access to the AMEX lounge. After eating, we left our zone and visited the Amex hospitality lounge.

The AMEX zone had a few things to check out and lots of free swag. Drinks were available for purchase (vs open bar at our venue) and I’m not sure about food but I think it was also for purchase. I think they had non-alcoholic drinks for free. Here was the view from the AMEX lounge (I preferred our view so after checking out AMEX, we went back):

The race – Once the race got underway, I was blown away by the incredible sound and speed of the cars going by:

The amazing service did not stop while the race was going on, and I never had to leave my seat to get a drink because our server kept coming by to check on everyone.

One thing I didn’t like about being at the race in person (this is not a knock on Vegas, and its more a preference or general observation), is that I didn’t know what was happening at the other parts of the track or who the leader was. This is because you can also see a small section of the track and they are going by so fast. Even though there was a commentator, and TV Screens, it was hard to follow the actual race vs seeing it on TV. The TV screens at the race were too small to see, and I would have to take pics and zoom to see who was leading etc.

After the race ended, there were some surprise fireworks!

Overall, I had an amazing time at the race. Would I do it again? 100% yes! I would want paddock tickets though to get a view of the grid, and cars in the garages. I thought that Vegas did a good job from the food, to service to venue. The only thing I think the venue could improve on was providing “worse food”. Let me explain, the food was so amazing, but I would like chips or popcorn available when the actual race was on. I am looking forward to experiencing other races in other cities and countries.