Formula One loves to play to its image as sport’s most glamorous, sun-kissed, high performance arena on the planet where the racing only stops so the parties can begin. Typically Monaco is hailed as the epitome of its fast cars, fast living formula.
If you’ve never been there it’s certainly worth a visit. You’ll instantly understand why it’s become one of the most famous events on the calendar, especially on a day when the Mediterranean sparkles like a sparking tray of diamonds and the harbour becomes a kingdom of majestic floating palaces.
You’ll also wonder what on earth possessed Anthony Noghes in 1929 to think that a race around the narrow confines of this tightly-packed enclave squeezed between steeply rising hills and the sea was a good idea, and how after nearly a century of racing only two cars have crashed and ended up in the harbour. Little wonder that Brazil’s three-time champion Nelson Piquet likened racing there to “riding a bicycle around your bathroom.”
Winning the Monaco Grand Prix forges a driver’s reputation like no other. Very few of the great names among F1’s 33 World Champions have failed to stand on the top of the podium in the Principality. Maybe Piquet’s words explain why he’s one of them.
Monaco has become the benchmark for street races although no other location can match its allure and ability to transform its elegant, delicate features with its beautiful tones of ivory and terracotta into a white knuckle riding racer’s paradise where the slightest error can pitch a driver into the steel crash barriers ringing the track and out of the race.
Even from a grandstand seat, never mind a special access pass to a series of eye-watering vantage points around the harbour you can appreciate the judgment and millimetre-perfect mastery needed to propel these carbon fibre missiles at mind-boggling speeds precisely and safely towards the chequered flag.
Monaco’s other unique element is the Friday of grand prix week when the track is returned to the public to be used as normal, albeit between barriers and with various important diversions, after Thursday practice and before the weekend action. So lorries, delivery vans, taxis and scooters can go about their business during the day and bars and restaurants lay out chairs and tables for diners in the evening on the very same surface that the world’s greatest drivers will be fighting over for vital World Championship points in Sunday’s race.
Hollywood stars from the nearby Cannes Film Festival are regularly paraded amid the throng on the grid before the race in May. I still remember the frenzy caused by the much-anticipated arrival of the late Diego Maradona in the gilded F1 paddock in the mid 1990s. As with so much surrounding Maradona, security was a random, chaotic process as photographers shoved and shouted to get their money-shots of the diminutive Argentine superstar.
So often the race then failed to live up to the fanfare and became a procession dominated by the driver starting from pole position. It usually required the weather gods to intervene with rain at some point in the afternoon to spring the contest to life. The decision by one TV station to broadcast from inside the harbour backfired horribly as a sudden, spectacular storm caused their boat to rock and roll, sending their on-board studio set with lights and cameras lurching around the desk and staff retching over the side with sea-sickness!
But for all its obvious attractions Monaco, for me, lacks the passion and adrenaline rush of a bona fide racetrack like Interlagos in Sao Paulo, the longstanding, ageing home to the Brazilian Grand Prix.
You take your life in your hands just driving on the multi-lane highways to the circuit when every local at the wheel believes they possess the genes of the late Ayrton Senna as they jump lanes and lights at will. But there’s an infectious zest and energy for making the most of every day even among the ramshackle favelas hanging onto hillsides above the slow-moving, highly polluted River Tiete which winds its way through the vast, sprawling conurbation with its population now above 22 million. Senna was their god and the Brazilian passion for motorsport left a permanent impression on me after visiting a Foundation in one of the many deprived districts in the city.
On race day fans are queueing at gates all around the circuit from dawn, smiling and waving as you pass them on the way to the main entrance, patrolled by armed police. This crowd comes not for yachts, casinos or champagne lunches but for the raw sensation of speed, ready to take to their feet to celebrate high intensity wheel-banging duels and last gasp overtakes under late heavy, braking from 200mph at the end of long, engine-busting straights.
I never saw Senna race on his home track where he won twice. But I was treated to a show of hero worship that must have greeted his every appearance in front of his adoring public. This adulation came quite unexpectedly at the 2002 Brazilian Grand Prix and caused me to stop as the hairs on the back of my neck rose in a way that I’ve rarely felt.
I was making my way from the paddock where the drivers and teams are based for the weekend to the BBC commentary box set in a long, grey row high above the seats in the main grandstand overlooking the pit straight. Under a baking hot sun I‘d walked up the steps of a bridge over the track when suddenly this huge cheer arose in the distance by the grid. The cheer became transformed into a dance with a rhythm and motion all of its own, with flags and banners waving in time to the whistles and drums and singing. You couldn’t fail to smile in awe and wonder at such pure uninhibited passion.
It was generated by an army of F1 fans from Colombia who’d travelled to watch their star driver Juan Pablo Montoya, an emotional, charismatic, tempestuous force who on his day could dice with the best and make driving look so easy and natural. He’d done just that in qualifying to take pole for the Williams team and had just arrived to take his place on the grid. I could only imagine he’d waved to his fan club as he got out of the car to talk to his engineers for the final time and that had triggered the delirious response.
Typically the Brazilians in the crowd reacted with cheers of their own, more in hope than expectation of a strong performance from their leading driver, Rubens Barrichello, in his unenviable role as Michael Schumacher’s team-mate at Ferrari. Barrichello led the race briefly before his car unfortunately expired as so often happened to him at Interlagos.
Inevitably Schumacher powered his way to victory after a first lap clash with Montoya, who eventually recovered to finish, highly aggrieved, in 5th.
But that initial Colombian outpouring of joy has lived with me ever since. No other crowd in sport has moved and stirred me as much, not at a World Cup nor the Olympic Games or a major final. The memory has always enhanced my feelings towards Brazil as a country where people embrace life with all its highs and lows, inspiring others to join them. Their appreciation for the dynamism and power of sport has always appeared more genuine & heartfelt than their more gilded spectators by the Mediterranean.
Memory added on July 4, 2021
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