FIA’s Mohammed Ben Sulayem under more scrutiny as Las Vegas GP allegations emerge

FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has been accused of trying to stop the Las Vegas F1 circuit from being certified and thus unable to be raced on ahead of last year’s inaugural event.

This is the second set of allegations against Ben Sulayem, after it emerged on Monday that he attempted to interfere with the result of the 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

As reported by the BBC, the allegations come from the same whistleblower and are centred around the Las Vegas GP which took place in November.

The whistleblower was allegedly instructed to find a way not to pass the new Las Vegas circuit safe for racing in F1 “on behest of the FIA president”.

It’s currently unclear why the FIA president would want to hamper the inaugural Las Vegas event.

An FIA spokesperson has told the BBC: "From a sporting and safety perspective, the Las Vegas circuit approval followed FIA protocol in terms of inspection and certification.

"If you recall, there was a delay in the track being made available for inspection due to ongoing local organiser construction works."

A report by the FIA’s compliance officer has been sent to its ethics committee detailing the claim.

The report notes: “[The manager}, who on behest of the FIA president instructed him to find some concerns to prevent the FIA from certifying the circuit before the weekend of the race".

It adds: "The purpose was to find fault with the track in order to withhold the licence" and "asked to be more specific, [the whistleblower] said that issues on the circuit were meant to be artificially identified regardless of their actual existence, with the ultimate goal of withholding the licence."

The officials ultimately passed the Las Vegas circuit following an inspection and the grand prix went ahead as scheduled.

Come the actual weekend, practice was heavily disrupted after Carlos Sainz went over a drain cover.

It completely destroyed the chassis on his Ferrari, leading to the cancellation of FP1, while FP2 was entirely delayed.

Controversially, second practice took place so late that fans weren’t able to watch.