Monaco

Introduction

The Shimmering Jewel in Formula One’s crown

EVERYTHING IN MONACO is unhurried and reeks of an eternal order in a disorderly world – until racing cars descend on this principality each May.

For most of the year, the streets are congested with vans and buses; Ferraris and Lamborghinis; Rolls-Royces and Bentleys; Porches and Maseratis; Mercedes, BMWs and Range Rovers; Minis and Smart cars. The speed limit is assiduously respected. Zebra crossings, manhole covers, kerbing and white lines are as apparent here as in any other major road system. Oil and grease are evident, too. It is an improbable environment to unleash a Formula One car at 300kph.

Around the circuit, apartments reach for the sky, and high-rise cranes have permanent employment as new buildings take root and a plethora of real-estate agents joust to sell or rent the properties. The prices can be eye-watering. One estate agency, Faggionato Real Estate – which becomes a neighbour on race day of the Princely Lodge, where His Serene Highness Prince Albert II and his wife, Princess Charlene, view the Grand Prix seated alongside officials from the organisers, the Automobile Club de Monaco (ACM) – provides a random sample of the market in the spring of 2016. In the window there were details of apartments valued from 10.8 million euros and sliding uniformly downwards to a small property at 1.7 million. One six-roomed apartment – ‘With exceptional views of the port and sea’ – was listed without a price attached. Instead, potential buyers were advised: ‘Prix – Nous Consulter.’ Only those who can afford to learn the price should bother venturing to ask, it can be assumed.

Each year the armada of ocean-going yachts and floating palaces that motor into the harbour becomes larger and more ostentatious. These boats are variously registered in tax havens like George Town in the Cayman Islands and Valletta in Malta, or Bermuda, or Madeira. It is rumoured – but never openly admitted – that vast sums of money exchange hands to claim a prime berth on the quayside during the Grand Prix weekend. Lynden Swainston runs a boutique travel agency, LSA, in south-west London, and knows from an association with Monaco of over forty years how much people are willing to spend to be aboard a boat in the harbour. ‘We have done several boats in the past and you are talking about having to pay £250,000 just for the rental and getting a boat into the harbour,’ she says. ‘These boats are meant for four or five millionaires to lounge around in the Mediterranean, but people hiring them at Monaco bring sixty to eighty guests aboard for parties, so tables and chairs have to be hired, then there is the cost of the bar and catering. That is another huge outlay.’

Plenty of Formula One drivers live in Monaco as their tax haven of choice, of course, with attractions including an absence of capital gains, income and inheritance taxes. Yet their nomadic existence means they sleep in their own beds fewer nights than most. Except for the one week each year when they can sleep and work in the same place.

This is a time when the streets are bequeathed to them.

While the circuit, in broad terms, is fundamentally the same track Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart raced, the pits are unrecognisable. In 2004 a modern pit complex was introduced; it was as profound a change in the landscape as an old warehouse in London docklands being transformed into a penthouse apartment. The garages are spacious, covered, and have offices overhead. Importantly, there is storage space within them. Prior to the modernisation, mechanics, tyre fitters, engineers and truckies had to carry all their equipment back and forth to the pits from the paddock on the quayside, a significant distance away. ‘We moved everything, each day and night, with a 7.5-ton truck,’ recalls Dave Redding, team manager of McLaren, who has also been on the payroll of the Benetton and Stewart teams and who has missed just one Grand Prix since 1989. ‘Cars were towed to the pits behind quad bikes,’ he explains. ‘At my time with Stewart – a new team – we were even further away in a car park we referred to as Alcatraz. Nothing really changed until the new pits were created.’

Brawn and Schumacher operated in close harmony at Benetton, then Ferrari. Each of them embraced the peculiar and often claustrophobic conditions. ‘So many people found it hard to carry out their roles because of the environment,’ says Brawn. ‘They were psyched out or didn’t enjoy it. Once I was in a management position, from the Benetton days in the early nineties, I’d sit down with my people and before the Monaco Grand Prix tell them, “Right, logistically, we are going to one of the most difficult races of the year. It is also the most challenging for the driver and most challenging for the engineers. I promise you, a lot of the people [rivals] out there hate Monaco. So, if you love Monaco you will have an advantage. It is a race to be relished. Absorb the atmosphere. Absorb the fact that you are talking to the spectators because they are all around you. Absorb the fact that it will take you an hour to get across town.” If you relish all that, it is a very special place. Michael engendered that mental spirit where he understood that, as this is the most difficult track to race on, he was going to enjoy it and be the best. He thought that by saying how much fun he thought it was to drive at Monaco he would intimidate other drivers. When you flip the coin to believe it to be a wonderful opportunity, not a pain in the backside, Monaco really does become an addictive race.’

Monaco provides another role of immense significance to Formula One. It is where sport and business collide, perhaps like nowhere else. Tony Jardine, whose PR and marketing company ran promotional programmes through the eighties, nineties and into the new millennium for the gigantic tobacco brands John Player, Camel and Lucky Strike, says succinctly, ‘Monaco is the glittering prize because everything associated with Formula One is epitomised in Monte Carlo: boats, champagne, success and excess.’ It is the shimmering jewel in Formula One’s crown.

As a former driver, and now a businessman and broadcaster, Coulthard is aware of the lure of the Monaco Grand Prix to captains of industry as well as to the fans arriving from around the world each year. Men fuelling the teams with sponsorship dollars all want to be there to view how their money is being spent and to entertain their clients and friends; they want to see and be seen. Deals are brokered over the weekend, with some contracts being renewed and new ones being courted. The schedule is uniquely different, too. Drivers have their first free practice on Thursday, and in years past the first of two qualifying sessions also took place that afternoon. In modern times, the hour-long, nerve-wracking qualifying session is held on Saturday afternoon; but it used to be the case that Saturday afternoon was the second qualifying hour. On these days the sound of high-revving Formula One engines bounces off the buildings like thunder rolling in from the surrounding mountains. Friday is a day of reflection for team management, and it is often the day drivers are required to appear on parade for sponsors. Most definitely, it provides another night of heavy partying for the glamorous, the glitterati and the reckless who, these days, most commonly spill out of bars and restaurants at La Rascasse and drink and dance across the circuit until just a few hours before the track is ‘live’ again.

Business is never far from Formula One’s agenda, though. ‘How do you get people to make emotional decisions?’ asks Coulthard rhetorically, as we cruise along the start–finish straight. ‘A glass of champagne, watching Formula One cars and hanging out with celebrities puts people in a heightened sense of emotion. It’s very difficult to sell Christmas in January, but pretty easy to sell in December, isn’t it? You just have to get people in the environment, in the mindset.’

Nestling on the fringe of the Côte d’Azur on the southern coast of France, Monaco occupies less than two square kilometres – half the size of Central Park in New York – but, with a population of a shade over 37,000, is the most densely populated country in the world. The Grimaldi family has ruled here since 1338. Prince Albert is a passionate supporter of the Grand Prix, like his parents before him, Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace, who arrived from Hollywood as Grace Kelly and infused the landscape with her glamour and beauty.

Prince Albert’s racing helmet, from his days representing Monaco as a bobsleigh driver at five Winter Olympics, is displayed next to a helmet belonging to Coulthard in Stars ’N’ Bars, a burger restaurant bulging with racing memorabilia and occupying a prime site close to the paddock. ‘We all [the Grimaldi family] feel the keeper of our racing history,’ Prince Albert said in an exclusive interview with Coulthard, broadcast on Channel 4 in 2016. Prince Albert was hooked, he said, from first being exposed to the noise and smell of racing cars in 1965, the year Hill completed a hat-trick of victories at Monaco en route to winning five times on this most celebrated speck of Grand Prix real estate. But it is his mother, Princess Grace, who has been credited with spreading Monaco’s appeal to Hollywood. Her presence enticed some of the greatest stars of the age to travel across the Atlantic to attend the race, its royal patronage and penchant for gala dinners assuring the Grand Prix an abiding place in newscasts around the globe. Her son said he remembered Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Gregory Peck and Bing Crosby all visiting Monaco at the invitation of his mother when he was a child. He would have been eight when the Beatles attended the race in 1966 at the height of their fame. Sir Jackie Stewart, who won that race for BRM, recounted how the Fab Four reacted to Formula One during our time together at his home. ‘John wasn’t so keen, as he didn’t take much interest in motorsport,’ he said. ‘Paul was interested, Ringo loved it and George was completely knocked out by it. George became a good, good friend.’

Over the decades, the race has continued to attract Hollywood’s most bankable stars, including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Will Smith and Sylvester Stallone. I interviewed Stallone in the motorhome of then reigning world champion Jacques Villeneuve in the harbourside paddock in 1998. The 51-year-old, who turned Rocky Balboa into a billion-dollar movie franchise, was researching an idea to make Formula One a Hollywood blockbuster, with him playing an ageing driver, ‘a guy like Nigel Mansell’. Stallone was amusing company, and clearly liked what he saw in Monaco. ‘Just as Rocky wasn’t really a boxing film, I don’t want this to be a motor-racing film,’ he said. ‘I want to make a human drama. What I have found is a sport where people understand and respect fear. But it is also a business involving hundreds of millions of dollars and a spectacle.’ He got that right. This was a fight too far for Stallone, though, as the scale and cost of producing a film around Formula One proved prohibitive even for him. Instead he starred three years later in a film centred on the CART series in the United States, which was critically panned. Cristiano Ronaldo, a truly startling sportsman, is one of countless footballers who has readily accepted an invitation to attend the Monaco Grand Prix for no ulterior motive than a wish to be entertained inside the inner sanctum of Formula One.

‘It is an incredible place to drive,’ concludes Coulthard. ‘Yes, it is difficult. However, everything you do as a racing driver is by the seat of your pants. You just adapt – and at Monaco it is very clearly defined where the limit is.’ No argument there. It is not defined by an artificial border sprayed on a corner with a run-off area large enough to be a car park; it is stipulated by those barriers that cripple a car that goes inches off line. It has broken the spirit of even the greatest drivers: like Ayrton Senna, a record six-time winner of the Monaco Grand Prix; like Schumacher, a seven-time world champion. In 1996, such was the casualty rate here that only three drivers took the chequered flag, the fewest number of men ever to finish a Formula One race, anywhere in the world.

Even before workmen spruced up the paintwork for the 2016 Monaco, it was possible to detect the just-visible markings determining the fourteenth slot on the grid. It is outside the offices of Financier de Monaco Wealth Management, and with the curvature of the road ahead sweeping to our right it seems to be a bus ride to pole position. No one had ever won the Monaco Grand Prix from further back than eighth on the grid – and that victory was achieved in Formula One’s Bronze Age by Frenchman Maurice Trintignant in 1955. Yet that record was astonishingly rewritten in 1996 by another Frenchman, Olivier Panis, in a race which is unlikely to be replicated. The narrative of how Panis came to deliver the greatest upset of all time on these streets is relived in these pages, in graphic detail, through the eyes of the Frenchman.

But I am duty-bound to stress that this book is not intended to be a conventional history of the Monaco Grand Prix. Rather it is an exclusive companion of stories and shared memories from some of those most intimately associated with this momentous motor race, men such as Sir Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Damon Hill, David Coulthard, Martin Brundle, Johnny Herbert, Jonathan Palmer, Ross Brawn, Panis, John Watson and 2016 world champion Nico Rosberg. At times, without apology, I have taken a deliberate detour in conversation with these men in order to place their accomplishments and experiences within the broader context of their lives and careers. There is a compelling candour to their testimonies.

Others with decades of involvement with this Grand Prix, like the FIA’s Charlie Whiting, and Michel Ferry from the Automobile Club de Monaco, Neil Oatley and Dave Redding from McLaren, as well as John Hogan (Marlboro), Mark Wilkin (BBC, and now Channel 4), PR veteran Tony Jardine, photographer Steven Tee, travel agent Lynden Swainston and caterer Lyndy Redding, provided me with insights that broadened the beam I have attempted to shine on the magic and mystique of Monaco.

As Lewis Hamilton memorably said, ‘So many great names become legends around this circuit, it’s an honour to fight for your place amongst them. But the coolest thing of all is that they still allow us to race here.’

1

Royal Beginnings:
Prince Rainier, Princess Grace and the ACM

THE ENTRANCE TO the Automobile Club de Monaco is located on Boulevard Albert 1er, barely 100 metres from the first corner of the circuit, Sainte-Dévote.

In the foyer is a portrait of His Serene Highness Prince Albert II and his wife, Princess Charlene; indeed, portraits of the ruling monarchy are omnipresent throughout the principality. Poignantly, before you reach the ground-floor restaurant there is a painting capturing the alluring beauty of Prince Albert’s mother, Oscar-winning actress Grace Kelly, which is a reminder that her marriage to Prince Rainier III, in front of the world’s media in April 1956, elevated the monarchy of Monaco to the global stage as she became Princess Grace.

Beyond the reception desk is a corridor leading to the library. On the right-hand wall is a photographic gallery of winners of the Monaco Grand Prix. Senna is prominently displayed, as the man who has won a record six times on these streets; another man with a history here is Lauda, a victor twice. The careers of the men overlapped as Lauda neared the end of his pre-eminence in the paddock and Senna made his introduction. Lauda recalls their earliest encounter as though it occurred yesterday. He was in pursuit of his third world championship, with McLaren then, after winning two titles for Ferrari. Senna was in his first season in Formula One in an uncompetitive Toleman. Only Senna knew – knew for certain – that greatness beckoned. It was 1984: in this scene Lauda is Big Brother.

‘I was on a quick lap on Thursday … and I came round a corner to find Senna driving in the middle of the road,’ says Lauda. Back in the pits, Lauda went in search of Senna. His question to the young Brazilian was typically brusque. ‘Are you one of us?’ he demanded.

‘What do you mean?’ replied Senna.

Lauda explained the fundamental requirements – and respect – expected from a new arrival on the most elevated stage in motor racing. ‘You can’t sit in the middle of the road in qualifying,’ said the Austrian. He had a manner that did not invite debate.

Senna was unusually self-assured, though. ‘Niki,’ he said. ‘This is the way I am.’

Lauda left without another word. In qualifying on Saturday, he knew his moment would arrive. ‘I did my lap and stayed out,’ he said. ‘I was looking in my mirrors and waving drivers through. Then I saw Senna approaching from out of the tunnel. On the way to Tabac, I stopped my car in front of his. I took first gear and went. In the garage I waited for him to come to me this time. He did.’

Senna began to make his feelings known, when Lauda interrupted him. ‘Ayrton,’ he said. ‘That’s the way I am.’ One day Senna would carry the most weight in the paddock, then it would be Michael Schumacher’s turn to be the master of this universe, followed by Lewis Hamilton today. But back then Lauda was a man not to be disrespected. ‘Senna had a belief that he was right, but I told him that I could do the same if that is what he wants. From this moment, we never had a problem. Actually, we got a good relationship.’

Michel Ferry is a link to this regal past and pragmatic present in Monaco. Beside his desk in the inner sanctum of the ACM is a photograph of him with Prince Rainier. Ferry, aged seventy-two, a silver-haired, debonair Monégasque, who is Commissaire Général of the Monaco Grand Prix, has held office within the ACM since 1962. He recalls with fondness the days of Stirling Moss, who won three times on these streets, and Graham Hill, who wore lightly the epithet ‘Mr Monaco’ given him for winning five times between 1963 and 1969. ‘It was another time, a different way of life, a lot of fun,’ says Ferry. ‘Every night there was a big party with the drivers. Graham was at the Hotel de Paris on Friday and Saturday nights. Drivers were playing cards and drinking.’

The late Innes Ireland, a British military officer, who raced in Formula One from 1959 to 1966, before becoming a much-liked colleague in the media corps, never thought that driving a racing car should dilute his lust for life. Monaco was his perfect playground. ‘I remember Innes being totally drunk two hours before the start of the Grand Prix. Nobody was shocked, it was like that,’ says Ferry, his affection for Ireland patently obvious.

Jackie Stewart and his wife, Helen, were an exception, says Ferry. ‘The couple were very close with Princess Grace,’ he explains. ‘They were received at the palace and stayed there, more than once, during the Grand Prix.’ In contrast, James Hunt never knowingly missed a party in the seventies. Remembering them was another matter. ‘James smoked drugs – everybody knew that,’ says Ferry. ‘Lots of girls were around. The access to the track was free. You could approach the drivers, you could touch the cars. It is finished like this today: the cars arrive in the pits and the teams close the doors. Today you need to ask ten people to apply for a pass!’

For some years it has been evident that the only people not partying in Monaco until after the flag has dropped are the drivers. With car manufacturers Mercedes, Ferrari, Honda and Renault investing at least $1 billion in Formula One between them, that is the least surprising factor of Monaco over a Grand Prix week. ‘There is a professionalism that is totally different,’ says Ferry. ‘Formula One became professional with Bernie Ecclestone, with money, and with a changing mentality. When I discuss with Formula One drivers living in Monaco – and there are a lot – they have no time to spend with their children during the Grand Prix. They attend press conferences; they have to speak with their engineers. They don’t have ten minutes during the Grand Prix weekend to spend time with friends. There is no time for night life.

‘Perhaps the first professional was Alain Prost. He had a chiropractor with him full-time and people judging if he has to eat potatoes, or not eat potatoes, and so on. Everyone looked at him and thought he was stupid. But we called Prost “Le Professeur” and now the drivers all have trainers and nutritionists. It is not just motor sport; it is the same in cycling and football. Sport is very professional because there is so much money involved – too much money.’

Money is not in short supply in Monaco. Yet Ferry, and a host of other diligent men working under ACM President Michel Boeri, should not be dismissed as men out of step with today’s dollar-driven environment. His sentiments have a currency that is held by a wider constituency tired of money being at the heart of too many conversations in the sporting universe; yet it would require a hard heart to begrudge racing drivers for being well rewarded for participation in a sport where death can arrive at the next corner.

Ferry’s role after more than five decades’ association with the Monaco Grand Prix is still to act as a force for modernisation. He tells me, ‘My programme is to find more safety, to give more evolution. After the Bandini crash, people said, “This is crazy.” But it was like this everywhere at that time. We had the first Armco guard rails here, at the chicane, in 1962, which, I believe, is the same time as they were put in place at Monza for the Italian Grand Prix.’

His office is on the left of a corridor which acts as a wall of fame, where the winners of this emblematic motor race are displayed for posterity for members of the club and visitors invited beyond the reception area. The image paying tribute to Panis is different from the others. The Frenchman is illustrated in oil colours at the wheel of his Ligier at Loews Hairpin, in a duel with Eddie Irvine, by esteemed British motor-racing artist Michael Turner. It is as if his win was so unexpected that there were no adequate photographs of him. Or perhaps it was deemed necessary to commemorate this moment of historic significance with a commissioned piece of artwork.

No matter. Panis has a rightly prominent place close to the room where Ferry is expounding the philosophy of the ACM. ‘Every year we discuss after the Grand Prix what we can do better next year,’ he says. ‘We have to prove every year that we are evolving to find a better solution; to change a little part of the track, to change guard rails. Our Grand Prix is limited, everyone knows that. Our track is not as wide as others. You have to prove you are ready to invest not only money, but in men as well, to find a solution.’

Monaco’s prestigious importance to the world championship is acknowledged in the ACM’s exceptional contract with Ecclestone, who was the omnipotent Formula One rights holder until January 2017, when the American company Liberty Media acquired Formula One. Under the existing contract, the post-race podium ceremony is always conducted by one of the royal family on the steps of the Princely Lodge, beside the front of the grid, rather than on an elevated platform decorated with the names of sponsors, which is a contractual requirement demanded from promoters of all other Formula One races. ‘The podium with members of the royal family is the image of the Monaco Grand Prix,’ says Ferry, a man whose contribution to the principality has been rewarded with admission to the two highest offices of distinction, Officier de l’Ordre de Saint-Charles and Chevalier de l’Ordre de Grimaldi.

Crucially for the principality, the ACM retain editorial jurisdiction over the pictures broadcast from Monaco on global television. ‘Television coverage is number-one priority,’ admits Ferry. ‘The glamour is backstage: the harbour, the yachts, the Hotel de Paris. You have the terrace there, where you can have caviar and drink champagne if you have the money, and the cars are three metres from you. This cannot exist anywhere else. This is the story, the legend of the place. You can have the same photo in 1929 as you can have today, except it is in colour and not black-and-white. The Casino, the Hotel de Paris, do not change.’

Ferry is keen to relate how the last ten-year contract with Ecclestone, agreed in 2010, runs to 2021, not 2020 as assumed. ‘Bernie is a close friend of mine, of the club,’ he says. ‘He is very correct with us. With Bernie we do not have complicated talks over contracts. If he says it is OK, it is OK. But this contract is until 2021, because the contract in 2010 was written for ten years, but this makes it eleven years inclusive. A lot of lawyers said this is crazy, but as it is a ten-year contract this makes eleven Grands Prix.’ What did Ecclestone say when he was told? ‘He said, “Ah”,’ smiles Ferry. Yet Ferry is just as swift to deny that the ACM is exempt from paying Ecclestone’s Formula One Management (FOM) a fee for Monaco’s place in the world championship. ‘Sometimes we read in the press that Monaco does not pay for the Grand Prix,’ he explains. ‘But we pay a lot – around the same as Monza pay.’ Even so, surely Ecclestone offers Monaco a more favourable deal than the contracts proffered to governments in Azerbaijan, Singapore and Abu Dhabi, for instance? It is consistent for all Grand Prix promoters to keep their ticket receipts – for the BRDC at Silverstone it is their only source of revenue from the British Grand Prix – but Ecclestone’s FOM take just a percentage of the trackside advertising at Monaco instead of all the proceeds, as is their custom at most other races.

When all is said and done, Monaco has the best commercial deal in Formula One. This is based on one simple economic criteria: Monaco is the showpiece of the world championship as much now as it was when Hill, Stewart and Lauda were winning in a less-enlightened TV age. Ferry understands the economics in play – yet still insists, ‘The ACM is still losing a lot of money each year. Look at what we have to build; it costs a lot, a lot of money. After we pay FOM we do not have a lot of income from our share of the advertising and tickets. We lose nearly 10 million euros from the Grand Prix.’

Of course, it is not a permanent entry into the debit column of the Automobile Club’s accounts. The value of the race to the principality means the government readily obliges by writing off the losses incurred. ‘The government do give back the money to the Automobile Club,’ says Ferry. ‘They have the VAT from the hotels and with the image of the principality given worldwide exposure it is in their interest. Our tradition is our heritage. Monaco is a special place. Why do Formula One drivers and other sportsmen and -women live here? For tax reasons, of course; but also because Monaco is safe, because it has good schools, and because it is clean.’

Coulthard, whose eight-year-old son, Dayton, is already having karting tuition in school holidays at Le Castellet, a former Grand Prix circuit, a couple of hours’ drive from his family apartment, discovered Monaco on arriving in Formula One in 1994. He acted on advice his father, Duncan, had given him as a teenage karting protégé. ‘My dad ran a transport business in Scotland, the second oldest in the United Kingdom, and he recommended that I live somewhere to maximise my earnings when – not if! – I get to Formula One, as the best I could hope for would be a ten-year career. When IMG were my agents, they suggested my options to achieve what my dad advised were the Isle of Man, Jersey or Monaco. On a clear day I could see the Isle of Man from where I grew up and I didn’t want to swap living on one small cold island for an even smaller one – fuck that. I’d been going on family holidays to Jersey for years and I didn’t see being on that small island made any sense either. So, I thought I’d go to Monaco. I came here for an Elf-sponsored event when I was a test driver for Williams and had a look around. Before then, I’d only ever seen the place on television highlights of the Monaco Grand Prix, listening to Murray Walker and James Hunt.’