Qualifying in Las Vegas may be a bizarre spectacle

What can Formula 1's drivers and teams expect from the Las Vegas GP? They themselves don't know yet.

In preparation for the weekend, there has already been frequent driving in the simulator on the street circuit that will include the iconic 'strip' in the famous city.

But not until Thursday evening when the first free practice takes place can the data really start to be collected.

Due to the number of unknowns ahead of the weekend, Pirelli is bringing the three softest tyres to the event as they expect low surface grip conditions.

“It is a step into the unknown, for everybody I believe,” Pirelli's Head of F1 Mario Isola told media including RacingNews365.com.

“Las Vegas will be cold, it’s a street circuit. So we were working with the teams and we asked them for simulations in advance to try to understand how much energy the layout of the aircraft is putting on tyres.

“We had information from the companies that are making the tarmac in order to understand how abrasive is the tarmac, and which is the level of creep we can expect. But still, a lot of question marks are on Las Vegas.”

Qualifying will be at midnight local time and it is expected that the temperature will be around four or five degrees.

According to Alexander Albon, this could cause an interesting scenario as drivers may need several laps to get the tyres up to temperature before they can set a fast lap.

“I wonder if we’re doing three or four prep laps for qualifying,” he said. “It will be a tough one.”