Somehow, nobody's talking about this? Tupac's his favorite rapper-Lewis Hamilton has a giant Tupac-inspired tattoo on his back. Literally: In the DRS zone between corners 4 and 5. I also remember 1996, and that weird September day in middle school, with all the airbrushed shirts flooding in, the morning after Tupac was shot. What few traces of that era left in Vegas remain relatively well-obscured (there’s a TopGolf there, now). They learned the hard way: Families don’t gamble. The straight between 16 and 17: Where a theme park at the MGM Grand once stood-a small Disneyland, built in the days of the city’s attempt at becoming a destination for families. Corner 12, the Treasure Island, which opened the day they blew up the Dunes to make way for the Bellagio, and then 13, the Mirage (once as the standard-bearer for New Vegas, now just barely hanging on). Just past corner 11 is where the Desert Inn used to be (where I saw Frank Sinatra perform, in 4th grade, with my mom).

I was driven on this track my entire childhood, and drove it in high school, late at night, getting into dumb Vegas kid trouble on them. Not that it’d count for much, right now: Every sector of it is lit up like the inside of an LED bulb, new grandstands flanking it on previous empty lots. I could probably drive them as F1 drivers are trained to do: with my eyes closed. The Las Vegas Grand Prix is 3 straights, 2 DRS zones, and 17 corners of prime central Vegas real estate, including a stretch of the Strip running from Spring Mountain south to Harmon-and I know every single sector.

A few days before lights out on the Las Vegas Grand Prix, I hop into my parents’ Kia Telluride, straight out of LAS, and gun it for the corner of Paradise and Harmon, before they close most of the roads the track covers to the public for the week.

Free practice roulette wheel