Las Vegas Grand Prix like the ‘National League’ of racing, Max Verstappen says
The Formula One world champion has compared this weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix to the fifth tier of English football, while suggesting fans just want to get “s***-faced”.
Max Verstappen will start from second on the grid on Sunday after being outpaced by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in the first Sin City race in 40 years.
He had earlier called the race: “99% show, and 1% sport”.
Formula One billed this weekend’s street circuit event as the greatest show on Earth, but instead it has been plagued with delays and low turnouts.
On Friday, crowds saw just eight minutes of racing during practice, after a loose manhole cover tore a hole in Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari.
The session resumed at 4am local time, surrounded by empty grandstands.
On Saturday, officials predicted 100,000 fans would line the Las Vegas streets, but only 70,000 turned up to watch qualifying, which began at midnight local time.
Speaking after Saturday’s qualifying, Verstappen said: “Monaco is Champions League and this is National League.”
“I feel like the show is important, but I like emotion. When I was a little kid, it was all about the emotion of the sport that I fell in love with and not the show. As a real racer, the show shouldn’t matter.
“An F1 car does not come alive on a street circuit. It is not that exciting. It is about proper racetracks. And when you go to Monza and Spa, these kinds of places have a lot of emotion and passion, and for me seeing the fans there is incredible.
“When I jump in the car, I am fired up. I love driving at these kind of places.”
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He continued: “I understand fans need things to do around the track, but it is more important that they understand what we do as a sport. Most of them just come to have a party, drink, see a DJ, or a performance act.
“I can do that all over the world. I can go to Ibiza and get completely s***-faced and have a good time. People come here, but they become a fan of what?
“They want to see maybe their favourite artist and have a few drinks with their mates, and then go out and have a crazy night.
“But they don’t understand what we are doing, and they don’t understand what we are putting on the line to perform.”
The three-time world champion said he was made to feel like a “clown” during the opening ceremony-style event on Wednesday, where the drivers were introduced on an elevating platform.
Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez during the opening ceremony earlier in the week. Pic: AP
He added: “As a little kid, I grew up wanting to become a world champion. More time should be invested into the actual sport, and what we are trying to achieve.
“The sport should explain what the team has done throughout the season, and what they are working for. That’s way more important than having these random shows all over the place. I am not passionate about that. I like passion and emotion.
“I love Vegas, but not to drive an F1 car. I love to go out, have a few drinks, throw everything on red and be crazy, but emotion and passion is not there compared to the old-school tracks.”
US
Trump denies claim he wrote birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein – and says he has ordered release of more case files
Donald Trump has called an alleged letter he wrote to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein “fake” and said he will sue the “ass off” Rupert Murdoch, who owns the paper that first published the claim.
In multiple posts on Truth Social, the US president accused The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) of fabricating the letter that it claimed was written by Mr Trump as part of a collection of letters addressed to Epstein that his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell planned to give him as a birthday present in 2003.
According to documents seen by the WSJ, Mr Trump’s letter featured several lines of typewritten text framed by what appeared to be a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman.
The paper said the letter concludes “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret”, and featured the signature “Donald”, allegedly drawn across the woman’s waist, meant to mimic the appearance of pubic hair.
Epstein took his own life in prison in 2019. Pic: AP
Responding to the WSJ’s claims, Mr Trump wrote: “The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein. These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures.
“I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DJT.”
He said earlier he would also sue the WSJ and News Corp, which Mr Murdoch owns. The WSJ is published by News Corp subsidiary company, Dow Jones & Co.
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From 16 July: Trump: Epstein case is ‘a boring story’
The Justice Department has not responded to the WSJ and the FBI declined to comment.
In a separate post, Mr Trump said he has asked the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to release “any and all pertinent grand jury testimony” in the case of the paedophile financier who was found dead in his Manhattan cell in August 2019, shortly after he was arrested on sex trafficking charges.
The release of any documents, Mr Trump said, would be subject to approval by a court.
The justice department has previously said it had around 200 documents relating to Epstein and that the FBI had thousands more. It is unknown how much of this is grand jury testimony – which is typically kept secret under US law.
Ms Bondi responded to the president on X, writing: “President Trump-we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts.”
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Elon Musk, who claimed last month that Mr Trump appears in the Epstein files, was surprisingly among the first to come to the president’s defence over the WSJ claims.
“It really doesn’t sound like something Trump would say tbh,” the tech billionaire wrote on X, before going on to ask where the evidence against Epstein allegedly held by the FBI had gone.
The Trump administration has come under criticism after the president appeared to U-turn on his own promise to release more information about the Epstein case publicly.
In the run-up to the US election last year, Mr Trump drew on rumours and conspiracy theories that appeared to accuse the Biden administration of suppressing the extent of Epstein’s paedophilia, predatory behaviour and his so-called “client list” – thought to contain names of the rich and famous who conspired with him in a child sex trafficking operation.
Ms Bondi fuelled these rumours in February by telling Fox News that the alleged Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review”.
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In the same month, the justice department released some government documents regarding the case, but there were no new revelations.
After a months-long review of additional evidence, the department earlier this month released a video meant to prove that Epstein killed himself, but said no other files related to the case would be made public.
The decision was criticised by many in Mr Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, who Mr Trump later called “weaklings”.
Sky News has contacted the White House for further comment.
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