Lillie Young has been a fan of Formula One racing for about a year. She already has a favorite driver in Lando Norris.
And with Norris racing this week in Las Vegas, it seemed like the perfect time for Young, 22, and her father, Travis, to travel from Florida to take in the spectacle of open-wheel racing at high speeds for the first time.
The Youngs were not only looking forward to watching Norris but were "very excited" to see the Strip. They added that they appreciated all the work that had gone into turning the usually busy Las Vegas Boulevard into a "pretty neat" racecourse.
After two days of qualifying runs, the Las Vegas Grand Prix is set to go at 10 tonight.
"It's sort of a bonding thing between father and daughter, so she was able to do the research, found the three-day passes and she set it all up, so it's pretty cool," said Travis Young. "We're exploring a lot of Las Vegas and doing a lot of stuff while we're here during the day, and in the evening it's just kind of father-daughter time (to) experience what the race has to offer."
The excitement was on display Thursday and Friday nights in the various fan zones dotting the 3.8-mile, 17-turn track that spans portions of Harmon and Sands avenues, Koval Lane and Las Vegas Boulevard.
At the East Harmon Zone next to the Pit Building, a crowd of fans congregated Thursday in front of the Heineken Silver Stage to hear interviews with drivers.
Racers Yuki Tsunoda, Lewis Hamilton and Norris were some of the drivers who took the stage ahead of their practice session to answer fan questions and talk about their experience in Las Vegas.
Hamilton, who said he first visited Las Vegas with his mother when he was 6, told the crowd he had been wanting a race in Las Vegas for years.
The league is mostly contested outside the United States. By picking the big stage of Las Vegas for a 10-year run hosting an F1 race, organizers hope to expand the sport's reach into a largely untapped American market.
"I'm happy to be back here. I mean, the first grand prix (in 2023) we had here, I think, was unexpected," Hamilton, of England, told the crowd Thursday night. "I'm a big fan of the movie 'Casino' and just all those movies that just, like, showcase this place. It's very surreal to be here many years later living my dream, getting to drive down (the Strip); there's only 20 of us that get to do it, and that crowd was amazing last year, and I hope we have a bigger crowd this year."
Megan and Ryan Moorhouse have been Formula One fans since 2020 and had returned to Las Vegas for this year's race because the accessibility was "really spot-on."
"Being in a wheelchair, that's kind of a big thing I always look at," Megan Moorhouse, 31, said. "But we're excited. We're right on Turn 1, so we're excited to hopefully see some action there on the first turn."
She is filming content for her Instagram, @rollingwithmegan, to bring attention to the experience of those using a wheelchair and accessibility accommodations during events like the Las Vegas Grand Prix. They're also excited this year to see another dynamic race and had done the Pit Experience earlier Thursday, where they got to visit the Pit Lane in the Pit Building where final preparations are made by drivers and their cars.
Ryan and Megan Moorhouse said they even were invited in by members of the BWT Alpine F1 team and got to take a picture in front of the Alpine Racing team's cars -- a favorite of Ryan's. The couple also planned to attend the free daytime Fan Experience near Wynn Las Vegas on Friday morning.
Ruchi Bhalani and Divya Kalanee left their spot near the track to find a place for a picture. Bhalani and Kalanee, who met while attending the University of Texas at Austin, reunited this week in Las Vegas for the race.
The women were celebrating Bhalani's birthday and, as big fans of Ferrari, thought it was the perfect way to spend a weekend.
The two were "manifesting a Ferrari win" Thursday night and joked that they would light a candle labeled "smells like a Ferrari win" that Kalanee gifted Bhalani for her birthday to hopefully increase those odds.
"(I'm a) big fan of shiny things, so I'm a really big fan of the glitzy Vegas F1 race," Bhalani said. She said that even though the Las Vegas Grand Prix in 2023 was new, "it turned out pretty cool last year, so we made a pact and we were like, if we both are employed and we can get some time off, we need to go next year."