Inside the Tech that allows F1’s Las Vegas GP to generate its own water

For one weekend each year, a stretch of grandstands separates the Bellagio Fountains from 20 cars zipping down the Las Vegas Strip. While Lando Norris‘ papaya orange McLaren and Max Verstappen’s leading Red Bull Racing are three races within reach of the championship title, the city faces its own sprint: A race against permanent drought. The excess that accompanies the race weekend, from a Formula 1 car dangling from a club ceiling to the Caesars Palace Emperor Package carrying a $5 million price tag, is best illustrated by the towering fountains misting water — 22 million gallons of it —  460 feet in the air. For a moment, it is hard to remember Formula 1 is racing in a desert.

In Nevada, water isn’t just something you drink. It ends up on local ballots and carries a steep fine for misuse. Water, or lack thereof, determines whether residents swap out their grass lawns for a $3 per square foot payout from the Cash4Grass program, established by the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA). The Las Vegas Valley Water District’s Water Patrol surveils neighborhood streets, policing residents who wash their cars on non-assigned watering days; and as environmentalists warn of future wars waged over water, Las Vegas is on the brink. Its own regional conflict has been ongoing for over a hundred years. 

The desert state, a dry expanse of land, received just four percent of the lower Colorado River Basin water allotment when the river water was split between South West states in 1922. Despite the state’s stretch of slot machines accounting for $10.2 billion in revenue in 2023, it continues to receive the same amount of water 102 years later. And its supply, overestimated during negotiations, is dwindling.

Formula 1 — calling the 4.225-mile length of casinos, designer stores, Elvis-officiating wedding chapels, and Cirque du Soleil shows home for the race weekend in late November — also uses water from the Colorado River via Lake Mead, according to the SNWA. Thirty thousand gallons of it was used just to clean the track. And although residents and businesses in the area are forced to be cognizant of their water usage, there is no specified water allotment for the race. 

Nearly 100 percent of Las Vegas’ indoor water is recycled and returned to Lake Mead — the…