Horner calls for change as 'everybody leaving Vegas f****d'

They kept saying they added the race because of US fan growth. How many new Americans fans did they think they'd get running that late?

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 …
It was pretty good for us Aussie fans, it was at 5pm here

He's not wrong. Its weird the times they put it on concidering its a US race. Just do a day race and everyone can catch up later.

Yep on the US east coast and I still haven't watched it yet. Too old to stay up for 1:00 am start, haha.
- I made it the first 20 laps but I’m CST so it started midnight for me, I didn’t start til 1230ish though because I watching the pre-race stuff
  Woke up at normal 7ish and finished it this morning
Vegas loses its entire selling point being on during the day, it has to be a night race. Moving it till just after dark would be better for the teams and US fans but would mean destroying the European viewing figures. It's a no win situation and the sooner FOM realise that you can't please every region with every race and just schedule more sensibly for local audiences the better.
What's worse is the flying back and forth over the Atlantic every week. I know circuits pay a huge premium to get certain spots on the calendar but it needs sorting out. Jumping so many time zones so often just isn't good.

They don't have the other NA races that late, so why only Vegas? I understand wanting it to be a night race, but I agree 8pm is also night but not ridiculously late

If it's during the day they don't get to show off the pretty lights of Vegas, if it's at 20 no Europeans will watch it. So they end up with this ridiculous non-solution, where it's still too early for Europeans and now also too late for Americans. At least the Australians and Asians get to finally watch it at a reasonable hour.
- europeans can deal with not watching one race live. North and South Americans have that situation like 50% of the other races.

And this is the guy from an energy drink sponsored team. Imagine how the rest must feel…

Horner felt what was witnessed on track was “one of the best races of the year, if not the best race of the year”.

I haven't seen the race but is he right? Was it a good race or just hype?

It was a good race. Not sure about the best race of the year, but certainly up there.
Hype. Was okay but nowhere near the best.
It was alright. I would say on par with Brazil in terms of racing.
It was really good and fun to watch for multiple reasons:
Tyres/grip: It's hard to get them to temperature and keep them there due to the long straights. Braking before corners is required. When braking hard into a corner due to a fight for position, we saw lock-ups, going wide, and then the overtake. So pressure from behind got rewarded with small errors and the position. Drivers had a hard time with the throttle and grip as well. Suddenly we had a fight for position through two corners and with inside - outside line, also overtakes through corners with elbows out fighting for the position. F1 racing suffers from too much grip for everyone - Las Vegas track design solves this.
Body kit/speed<>grip: Due to high track speed, e.g. Ferrari was running the smaller rear wing they also use during the Monza race. It grants a few more km/h on the straights but costs downforce in the corners. Depending on team decisions, they had an easier time to overtake on the straight, even without DRS, but fell victim to others in brave corner-overtakes. Which is again a combination of tyre temperature and downforce in the car setup or even the car's overall design.
Track limits: It's in a city, there are walls. Nobody even tried to cheat, as mistakes are punished immediately by the wall. Suddenly it's no problem to stay on the race track. Drivers were even using the corner safety zones and doing a loop there, just to stay on the track, which is the lighter immediate punishment.
The race itself was pretty good, everything around it, from having the police throw out paying customers on FP2, the rushed track inspection that then caused two accidents, cringe events, and Toto having a meltdown to the time table (pretty much targeted at Chinese time zone) were pretty bad, IMO.

As an east coast watcher, I enjoyed it