Why Monaco is still F1's most vital race

The driving challenge

"You have to feel you own the road"

Clinging like a limpet to a rocky hillside between two cliffs, Monaco is half the size of New York's Central Park and ranked among the least suitable venues on earth to host a motor race even when top-flight racing engines mustered little more than 100bhp. For race founder Antony Noghes it was a matter of pride: the forerunner of the FIA had bounced the Automobile Club de Monaco's membership application because it didn't host an international event within its borders. Noghes spent weeks walking the streets to come up with a layout that would enable him to host such a race and put one over on the governing body, which he did in 1929.

The cobblestones, tramlines and gasometer are long gone, and some of the other street-track features that persisted for decades have retreated behind the barriers ("You get everything that you meet on a public road," noted Graham Hill in 1968 after his fourth Monaco win. "Lamp posts, trees, nightclubs, houses, hotels, kerbs, gutters. It's a proper road race, in the true meaning of the term."). But it's still intense.

"The challenge is off the scale," says David Coulthard, twice a winner here. "There's oil, there are manhole covers. One mistake and you're in the barrier. You become incredibly tuned in to your environment. You have to feel you own the road. You have to take ownership of this space, know every inch in the same way as you know, if the power goes out in your house, how many steps it is to the door."

"You get everything that you meet on a public road. Lamp posts, trees, nightclubs, houses, hotels, kerbs, gutters" Graham Hill

Winning here marks drivers out as special. Even some champions (notably Nelson Piquet and James Hunt, who retired immediately after failing to finish here in 1979) have not succeeded. Other more middling talents - Olivier Panis, Jarno Trulli, Jean-Pierre Beltoise - excelled here on the day.

"Physically and psychologically the whole race was working on millimetres and details," says Mika Hakkinen of his 1998 Monaco win, which he views as his crowning achievement. "Every lap the circuit was changing: we had yellow flags, oil flags... All the time there was something and it required incredible concentration all the way through."

Show me the money

"The most colourful, glamorous location"

Being a tax-free environment with a shortage of real estate, Monaco is constantly remaking itself in the image of its present residents. The common denominator is wealth.

"We had a very good time boating around the various beaches during the day," wrote the society columnist, Taki, of a sunny day in 1960 spent in the company of the Hollywood actress Janet Leigh. "Dancing in Monte Carlo in the evening, Monaco being not only Russian- and vulgarian-free back then, but also looking like Ruritania-sur-mer rather than Las Vegas-on-the-sea."

Change may not have universal appeal, but commerce and its boldest exponents are drawn here like the proverbial moths to a flame. Monaco, traditionally, is where teams lavishly entertain sponsors and do deals.

"It's still the most colourful, glamorous and exciting location we visit," says Sir Jackie Stewart. "Chairmen, CEOs and presidents of major auto companies and financial service providers have been coming here since 1929. It's got the best of everything. Prince Rainier and Princess Grace brought glamour and colour to this little Principality, and Prince Albert has developed that."

It's certainly the only race that features a floating hospitality unit, Red Bull's notion of its own status far exceeding the amount of space actually available in the paddock. But Monaco now has competition.

"Other destinations are equally significant from a commercial standpoint, such as the US GP and Singapore, because they are important markets," says McLaren CEO Zak Brown, Formula 1's pre-eminent sponsor-roper in his previous career as head of marketing agency JMI. "But Monaco, as a brand, represents what F1 stands for more than any other grand prix because of the glamour, the prestige, the history. Our hospitality is sold out this year. And it's tough to get into hotels and restaurants - it's busier than ever.

"Things have changed to the extent that the days of CEOs wanting to be seen flying into Nice by private jet and then helicoptering over to Monaco to get on a 300-foot yacht are over. That used to be totally cool, totally acceptable, but these days more discretion is expected."

The wheel of fortune

"This guy is **@@*** crazy"

Not for nothing is Monaco synonymous with gambling. In the mid 19th century the enterprising Prince Charles III made the best of a poor hand - he'd had to trade ownership of neighbouring Menton and Roquebrune, Monaco's chief sources of income, for independence from France. So he opened a casino in which one could play roulette, a game banned in France, initiating Monaco's transformation from backwater state to the playground of the wealthy.

"I went to the mechanics and said, 'We can still finish on the podium'. I saw the looks from them that said 'This guy is nice, but he's fucking crazy'" Olivier Panis

Chance and opportunism have played a part in the outcome of the Monaco Grand Prix from its earliest days. In the first world championship grand prix held there, in 1950, gusting wind sent waves over the parapet and onto the track at Tabac, leaving a pool of water that race leader Juan Manuel Fangio negotiated cleanly - the following drivers less so. Fangio won by a lap. And just two years ago Red Bull threw away certain victory for Daniel Ricciardo by muddling its tyre sets in the crowded pitlane.

While the narrow layout can make for processional racing, and does render pole vital, the unexpected is never far away. In 1992 runaway leader Nigel Mansell suffered a puncture, and the resultant pitstop left him behind arch-rival Ayrton Senna, who duly 'parked the bus' at every corner for the rest of the race. Four years on, Panis took an unlikely win after a misfire in qualifying consigned him to 14th on the grid. "I went to the mechanics and said, 'We can still finish on the podium,'" he recalls. "I saw the looks from them that said 'This guy is nice, but he's fucking crazy.'"

Rain obligingly made the race chaotic, as it had for Beltoise in 1972. Panis was one of only three drivers running at the finish, but he earned this victory through a combination of pitting at just the right moment, overtaking when he had to - nudging Eddie Irvine's Ferrari in the process - and holding his nerve when his fuel ran low at the end, carefully short-shifting while ignoring his engineer's increasingly shrill calls to pit for a splash-and-dash.

You can't rely on rain, though; despite the perception that Monaco is often wet, only twice in the past 10 years have the heavens opened during the race itself.

Danger stalks the streets

"I went past the fire several times"

The Monaco Grand Prix is the slowest of the year but remains one of the most hazardous of all - this in spite of average speeds not having increased as much as at other venues: Sebastian Vettel won last year's race at an average speed of 92.65mph, whereas in 1950, albeit on a slightly different layout, Fangio averaged 61.33mph.

Mistakes in Monaco are less perilous than they once were, but only through hard-learned health and safety lessons. Among the most ghastly was Lorenzo Bandini's death in 1967, when he clipped the guardrail at the chicane with his left-rear and spun into the straw bales, which were all that separated the track from the quayside and the iron mooring bollards. Nearby spectators related that they could hear Bandini's screams above the engine noise of passing cars as his inverted Ferrari and the straw bales caught fire, fanned by the blades of the TV helicopter hovering lecherously above. And the race carried on. "I went past the fire several times," said Bandini's team-mate Chris Amon, "and it never occurred to me that Lorenzo could still be in it."

The marshals are now better trained - for months beforehand they run specialist drills in righting inverted cars as well as fire-fighting - and the entire circuit is bounded by high-tech barriers. There's no room for complacency, as Karl Wendlinger's near-fatal 1994 shunt at the scene of Bandini's death amply proved.

Nowadays it's the game of chance the drivers play with the barriers that causes the majority of shunts, large and small. Better safety provisions mean the consequences are less severe than in years gone by: in 1991 Alex Caffi hooked a right-rear into the barrier at the Swimming Pool and was left sitting in a pile of carbon fibre. Last year Stoffel Vandoorne nerfed his right-front against the apex barrier there in Q2 and hit the barriers - but still raced the same car the next day. When Caffi crashed, both ends of the Swimming Pool were blind-entry corners. Now they're open chicanes. Some say this has had a detrimental effect on the challenge of Monaco - others, perhaps more wisely, point out that the barriers are there to be kissed.

"Michael [Schumacher] would scuff every tyre on a qualifying lap," says Ross Brawn, "because that was the shortest and fastest way round..."