Forty-two years ago, staging a Formula 1 race in Las Vegas was yet another example of Bernie Ecclestone’s fabled ingenuity. By 1981, to be exporting grand prix racing to a start-up venue in a dusty car park alongside a casino-hotel in the Nevada desert emphasised that the Little Big Man had broken the grip that the owners of the classic European circuits had held on the governance of the sport only a decade or so earlier.
Not all of Bernie’s wheezes had worked out perfectly. For the French GP he was still persisting with the Dijon-Prenois circuit, owned and built by a one-time all-in wrestler who had financed the project privately. A Bernie sort of guy, you might say, although the ex-grappling star’s habit of settling disputes by punching his adversaries in the throat
