Troubled Las Vegas Grand Prix hit by lawsuit on behalf of 35,000 fans
The troubled Las Vegas Grand Prix has been hit by a lawsuit on behalf of 35,000 fans.
Already controversial for its price tag, comparisons to non-league English football and an incident with a manhole cover, Formula One’s return to Sin City has hit another sharp curve.
The race is expected to begin at 6.00am UK time on Sunday, with Britain’s George Russell starting in third position for Mercedes, behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in pole position.
Sunday’s contest has been hit with a class action lawsuit after the highly anticipated first action on the neon-lit circuit – Thursday’s practice session – lasted less than nine minutes.
Fans who had bought tickets to the event hoping to see drivers tearing down the Las Vegas Strip at breath-taking speeds instead watched as a loose manhole cover tore a hole in Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari, bringing proceedings to a screeching halt.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
‘Shambolic’ Las Vegas Grand Prix halted
What followed was a five-and-a-half hour delay while crews removed all 30 covers along the 3.8-mile layout and filled the holes with sand and asphalt.
A second 90-minute practice session began in front of empty grandstands in the middle of the night, long after fans had been cleared out in a move officials said was a necessary safety precaution.
Las Vegas Grand Prix officials attempted damage control, offering $200 (£160) merchandise vouchers to single-day ticket holders, but the compensation did not extend to those who had purchased three-day passes.
“There are a number of issues with that (compensation)”, lawyer Steve Dimopoulos said.
“A lot of fans probably don’t even want that, they want their money back.
“There are also peripheral issues of what about the people that came in from out of town and paid for substantial air fare and hotels.”
News of the lawsuit comes after Verstappen – reigning world champion – compared the Las Vegas Grand Prix to the fifth tier of English football, while suggesting fans just want to get “s***-faced”.
“Monaco is Champions League and this is National League,” he said.
“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.
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.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
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.”
👉 Follow Trump100 on your podcast app 👈
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”.
Read more:
Ghislaine Maxwell could challenge imprisonment
Why is Trump fighting with MAGA over Epstein?
The huge impact of Musk’s row with Trump
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
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.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike