The secrets to racing at Monaco | Frankel’s Insight

But nowhere is this feeling more acute than at Monaco. Nor is there anywhere that has changed my feelings towards it so dramatically. If I’m honest I never really enjoyed racing at the ‘Ring. And I loved Le Mans on my first racing lap there 15 years ago and loved it even more on my most recent at the Classic two years ago. Monaco? Before I went I thought it a stupid place to race cars and, while I’m in a sharing mood, went only because I could and it was a box I could tick which would allow me to tell stories like this for years to come. As a kid and young adult, I never dreamed of racing at Monaco.

My first laps in practice – for the Monaco Historic in 2014 – did nothing to disabuse me of that notion. Even though the Jaguar C-type I was driving had proper history there, coming sixth in the 1952 Monaco Grand Prix (for those of you screwing up your face at this news, a great slice of motor racing trivia is that in 1952 the Monaco Grand Prix was run to sportscar regulations), and was well suited to the street circuit with its torquey engine and compact dimensions, I just didn’t enjoy it at all.

I’d tried to learn the circuit on a simulator in England a few weeks earlier, but it still felt totally alien, just a series of technical, tricky but largely unrewarding corners connected by short and uninteresting straights. So the next lap I did was on foot with ace historic racer and restorer Gary Pearson. It was the best thing I could have done because the level of detail Gary provided was transformational for my understanding of the track. For instance, as you rocket up the hill toward Casino Square the Massenet curve at the top is fast and blind, so Gary showed me exactly which one of the several pedestrian crossings on the road marked the precise braking point. In the tunnel he pointed out how the corner sharpens halfway through and where to position the car. And I remember him pointing to the tiny kerb up against the barrier at the exit of the very last corner and saying you need to use that because it changes the camber of the road and really helps your exit speed. The idea of doing that in someone else’s C-type may have made me gulp a bit, but he was exactly right.

It started coming together in qualifying, but it was only once we were racing and the potential carnage at turn one avoided that I really and finally clicked with the place. And then? Oh my goodness, it was utterly brilliant, even before you factor in that you’re racing at Monaco with a history dating back to Grover Williams’ first win there in 1929.

So let’s do a lap. Over the start/finish line at great speed already fretting about Saint Devote ahead because you’ve seen so many far better drivers park it in the wall at the exit. But lots of time can be gained here because it’s faster than it looks, and it’s important because all the speed you can carry you’ll keep with you right the way to the top of the hill.

Massenet is probably the easiest corner to get wrong, the price of which is sticking it in the barrier right outside the Hotel de Paris. Never a good look. But it’s not that important for your overall lap time so take care, turn in late and get back on the power early. There’s not much to be gained but a lot to be lost by being too aggressive through the slow turns at Casino and Mirabeau and the famous hairpin that has taken on many names over the years, Gasworks, Station, Loews and today Grand Hotel is actually nothing special. But we’re getting to the good stuff.

Portier leads into the tunnel so a fast exit is crucial, if you have the traction a slow in, fast out approach works just fine. Into the tunnel which is easy flat in a modern F1 car, less so in something on treaded tyres with no downforce. I did do it without lifting once but with more oversteer than I’d like in top gear in a car this valuable when there’s literally nowhere to go if it gets away from you. The chicane is at the exit and while I understand the need for it, it’s just rubbish, the one blot on an otherwise magnificent circuit. And no corner is more magnificent than Tabac – surely the greatest corner with the most mundane name on earth – which you flick into as brave as you dare, the sound of the howling engine ricochetting off the barriers and buildings. Up to the Swimming Pool whose left right entry you take at almost unabated speed – that’s how to do a chicane chaps – before it all slows down once more at the exit, into the Rascasse, Anthony Noghes and onto another lap.

What you have to get your head around is just how hard this place makes you think. If you are a graduate of the ‘chuck it in and sort it out’ school of racing – guilty m’lud – you’re going to struggle at Monaco. To maximise speed while also minimising risk calls not for untold courage nor otherworldly over-the-limit car control, but a surgical level of precision. It feels like a different kind of racing and there, of course, is where the fascination lies for the driver. It’s why some of the world’s top drivers struggle to get on there while others go better there than anywhere else.

The example of the latter that most readily springs to mind is Richard Attwood in the 1968 Grand Prix. Parachuted into Team Lotus after the tragic death of Mike Spence, having done just one race to the 3.0-litre formula regulations introduced over two years previously, and in a car he’d never raced before, he not only came second only to Monaco master Graham Hill, but broke the outright lap record in the process. But if you’ve ever seen Richard race at Goodwood and his millimetre-perfect style, that won’t surprise you at all.

My last thought on the subject: the more time you spend circulating that track in something old, small and slow, the more what F1 drivers today achieve there in their monster machines beggars belief. It may not be the most exciting race to watch as a spectator, but as a driver there really is nothing else quite like it.

Images courtesy of Getty Images.