Everyone says it's for the European fans, but it was 7am when the race started, I watched it back later. If they would held it on 12am local, it would have been 7pm here in Europe, much better for everyone. I think the hotels would not like it course their shiny names and fountains wouldnt be as bright during the day...
I think you mean 12PM. 12AM is midnight. I also think your timezones are off. Vegas is 8 hours behind London, and 9 hours behind central European cities, I believe.
I believe the issue is, that they wanted it to be a night race. Las Vegas at night is what their brand is and I can see why they would want to orchestrate it like that.
Currently, sundown on LV is between 4 and 5pm local time, making a night race starting at 7pm local time fully viable. But a GP starting at that time would have resulted in the race being run at 4am in most of europe, 3am for the UK.
So i think there is some merrit to the claim a race start at 10pm local time was a deliberate choice to cater to european viewers. It's much easier to convince someone to maybe wake up an hour earlier on a sunday and watch the race over breakfast than to tell them to get up in the middle of the night.
Personally, I didn't intend to watch the race early in the morning, I just happened to wake up about 20 minutes after lights-out, so I put it on anyways to follow it to the end.
Somewhere I had read, or a commentator mentioned in passing, that it was held so late so as not to interfere with the regular traffic. That is, they agreed on a time where the fewest people would be on the strip, trying to go spend money somewhere.
So probably marketed for US growth, kind of convenient for Europe, but mostly a drag for everyone …
