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Monaco, Formula 1 and Me
A Visit to the 1996 Monaco GP

By Tim Shaw

The writer Paul Theroux described Monaco as a nasty place largely inhabited by anal retentive tax exiles. In my mind it has always been the world's most glamorous destination, largely inhabited by people who probably need to toss a coin to decide which Ferrari to drive from their swish apartment on the hill to their ocean going yacht in the harbour.

I must confess though that my impressions were formed by watching countless James Bond movies, mostly involving fast Ferraris and faster women living it up in the famous casino, and many years of watching Formula One Grand Prix coverage on television in the middle of the night in the depths of a Tasmanian winter, when anywhere with sunshine looked good. For my money, the Monaco GP has always been the highlight of the racing season, because although many people quite rightly argue that it is one of the tracks least suited to racing a modern Formula One car, to watch it is to see so much more than a motor race. The fast cars, the expensive yachts, the glamorous people, the signs in foreign languages, the simple fact that it is over there, such a long way away from the country town where I grew up, all add up to produce a magnetic attraction that has always been irresistible. I've always had the feeling that if I was to ever visit Monaco, merely breathing the same air as so many wealthy people would cause me to somehow be irreversibly absorbed into the swirling world of money and glamour, that I would suddenly find myself in a dinner suit holding a martini and instructing my grovelling lackeys to gas up the Lear jet.

As luck would have it, last year my chance finally came to be in Monaco for the Grand Prix. We just happened to be nearby at the time (well, Maranello in Italy, but that's another car story).

We decided to stay in Nice, which is a half hour train ride from the centre of Monte Carlo, or a 2 hour car ride, or a 4 hour bus ride (on Grand Prix weekend), whichever you prefer. In fact we took a ferry on race day, but more of that later. Nice is a pretty seaside resort town, buzzing with tourists in the last days of autumn. It is a good base for exploring the Riviera, and handy to Monte Carlo. We decided against staying in Monte Carlo itself, as we had a feeling it would be outrageously expensive, although we never really found out. Instead we booked a pleasant apartment in Nice a few minutes walk from the beach. We organised our Grand Prix tickets before we left Australia by contacting the Automobile Club of Monaco, and buying them through an English company. The price of the tickets is the first difference you will notice from the Australian GP - in Monaco you don't buy a 4 day pass for $350. You buy one ticket for Saturday qualifying for $200, then another ticket for the race for around $500. Seriously expensive.

On the Saturday before the race we caught the train into Monaco, with a loose plan to explore the city and take in the hour long qualifying session in the afternoon. I should point out that when you go to the Monaco GP, you don't go to Monaco and then go to the GP. When you go to Monaco, you are at the GP. Being only a couple of kilometres across, as the champagne cork flies, the GP carnival takes over the entire principality. You are left in no doubt about what is going on, with every footpath crowded with people and F1 merchandise stalls, and every street filled with cruising exoticars and revved up fans. We explored the area around the palace, and found a very pleasant restaurant in a picturesque laneway to have lunch. Contrary to my expectations, we didn't have to pay $50 for a lettuce leaf for lunch. In fact the food was as good in quality and reasonable in price as anywhere else in France or Italy (though it's all relative). Monaco is also a fascinating mix of cultures, with many people speaking French, Italian and English. It's a great place for the language student.

After lunch we watched Michael Schumacher claim pole position in qualifying, then caught a local bus up to the casino to look for the mysterious Eastern European women in Italian sportscars that we knew just had to be there somewhere. The cars were there, but unfortunately by the time we had finished gawking at the endless procession of Ferrari F50's and Lamborghini Diablos cruising the streets, we arrived at the casino too late to get in without significantly increasing the standard of our attire (no jeans after 7:00pm). Having neglected to carry our dinner suits, we contented ourselves with standing outside the Hotel de Paris just across the track from the casino, watching a cavalcade of very wealthy looking people passing in and out of the grand entrance. Some we recognised, such as Bernie Ecclestone and Jean Todt. Some had famous faces we were sure we knew, but just couldn't place. Some looked as though they were wearing their loungeroom furniture. We stood outside the hotel and snapped photos of people and cars in equal amounts, until we realised it was so late we were in danger of missing the last train back to Nice. As it turned out, we were in more danger of making an impromptu midnight visit to Spain since we our translation of the French railway timetable was a bit ordinary, but by sheer luck the train happened to stop at Nice before heading out of the country.

On race day, we decided to beat the crowds on the train and travel by sea, on a special Grand Prix ferry service. It seemed like a good idea at the time, arriving in style on our own yacht, admittedly a bit smaller than everyone else's but a stylish entrance nevertheless. The day was overcast and miserable, with drizzling rain. The taxi driver who took us to the port at Nice kept apologising for his English (which was excellent), and told us that it is always sunny the day before and the day after the GP, but it always rains on the day. This year he was right anyway. The ferry trip was cold and windy and took about 45 minutes, and gave us the feeling we were participating in a luxury version of the Normandy invasion, surrounded by a flotilla of massive private yachts blasting through the choppy grey sea towards Monaco harbour, while overhead there was an endless circle of helicopters delivering passengers to Monaco and returning to Nice for more.

The ferry delivered us at around 11am, not to the main marina in front of the track where we had expected, but to a smaller one on the other side of the palace. Being such an overcast day, we decided not to go immediately to our seats for the race, but to drop into a cafe by the marina for a quick coffee. Our cafe au lait and chocolate chaud had barely arrived when the heavens opened and we had to run for cover as the umbrellas we had been sitting under collapsed with the force of the torrential downpour. Coffee dragged on into lunch as the rain showed no signs of stopping and we had no inclination to get soaking wet walking to the track.

Fortunately as race time approached the rain virtually stopped, and we put aside thoughts of buying some very expensive Ferrari umbrellas and made our way to the track in our tacky disposable raincoats given to us by Qantas staff on a rainy day in Hong Kong. We had seats next to the famous pool, looking out over the marina, which was spectacular even on such a grey day. One of the noticeable deficiencies of the Monaco GP as a sporting event is the sheer lack of grandstands - I guess there just isn't anywhere to put them. Most of the available seats are concentrated around the pool area. Many more people view the race from the balconies of nearby buildings, but there didn't appear to be any seats on pit straight, which is usually my favourite place to sit. We had quite a good view of the track all the way from the tunnel exit to the front of the pool, as well as being able to see the servants pouring champagne for the bored looking blue blazer-gold button folks on the backs of the yachts in the marina. A small point though, the seats are of the hard bench variety, no backs and with very good water retention properties on a rainy day. We made use of some free English newspapers we had been handed in the street to dry our seats, not realising we were in a grandstand mostly full of English tourists. Fortunately they seemed to think we had found a most appropriate use for their papers.

Although the rain had stopped, the track was still soaked, leading to a massive attrition rate of drivers as anyone who watched the race will know. Perhaps the most notable was Michael Schumacher, who didn't even complete the first lap, much to the childish delight of the English "Damon is a God second only to Nigel" fans surrounding us. We felt a bit like packing up and going home at that point, being die hard Ferrari fans. However the race did end up having a degree of interest if only for the unprecedented levels of car destruction that took place.

After the race we made our way back to the marina to get the ferry back to Nice. The Mediterranean sea had built up a ferocious swell during the day, leading to a trip that I can honestly say was one of the most horrific adventures of my life. I grew up around boats, but I was glad to get back to Nice alive and cannot recommend the ferry on anything other than a very calm day. We staggered into a magnificent seafood restaurant near the dock no doubt looking very strange in our transparent plastic raincoats.

All in all, race and weather included, it wasn't a day that showed Monaco at it's best. But even on an overcast day with a pretty ordinary race, the compelling magic of Monaco was still very much there for me. If you pictured Monte Carlo as a town full of Ferrari driving, champagne sipping millionaires, you'd be about right. How much you enjoy being in a place like Monaco, especially during GP weekend, depends on how much you like being surrounded by people who earn more in a minute that most of us earn in a year and own yachts that are probably bigger than the suburbs we live in. Personally, I don't mind it, and thus it became obvious fairly quickly that Monte Carlo is my kind of place. You may feel differently.