The Monaco Grand Prix’s position on the Formula 1 calendar remains intact, bar a minor date tweak, as a new deal has been signed to run until 2031.
But given the iconic race’s place in F1 has come under question in recent years, is this the right move for the series? Our writers give their input.
There’s enough room in the calendar for one weekend where the thrill isn’t the race – but it has its own charm – Alex Kalinauckas
One of the best things about Formula 1 is that it’s a broad church. The Monaco GP sums this up well.
It’s a track from a bygone era, which deserves considerable recollection and respect. It’s where the excesses of the modern iteration of the championship (such as the huge team motorhomes) must be crammed into a small space. This also applies to car size, with the lengthy modern machines even more of a challenge for the drivers to thread through the principality’s barriers. This is by far the best thing about Monaco.
Yes, it can come at a cost of a processional race in dry conditions, but everything that pre-dates a sunny Sunday on the riviera is still an essential part of excelling in grand prix racing. Qualifying speed is a massive part of the overall test for success for drivers, which in Monaco is hyper-focused by the track’s compact nature.
The thrill of Monaco qualifying is up there with the best that F1 can offer. Around all the heartbreak and eventual joy for home hero Charles Leclerc in this challenge in recent years, the 2023 event stands out most vividly in this regard. Max Verstappen’s stunning third sector ended up being the only thing standing between a first Aston Martin F1 win ever and a 33rd for Fernando Alonso.
It was a lap for the ages – at a time where on other ‘normal’ circuits the opposition couldn’t get close. Monaco’s layout negates any particular power or aerodynamic design efficiency prowess. A year on, Verstappen having to push so hard to compete with the reinvigorated Ferrari and McLaren squads led to him hitting the wall and losing his victory shot.
Monaco is famously a ‘sunny afternoon for shady people’. Yet given the alternative these days would be another identikit street track in a different city or a runoff heavy Tilkedrome – both things that induce similar angst at the heart of this discussion – that shade is only coming from people who can’t accept that the specifics of Monaco are a price worth paying for one weekend in 24. Plus, if it’s a wet affair, it’s also an instant classic.
And then there’s the list of F1 legends to have won in Monaco. With many more to come, they deserve to be given the opportunity to shine at this intrinsic challenge of grand prix racing and put their names alongside those who previously starred on the streets of Monte Carlo.
Monaco is not what it once was – the jewel in the F1 crown – Mark Mann-Bryans
The challenge of qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix is indeed a unique one – but since when should the result of a Formula 1 race be determined over one lap on a Saturday afternoon?
The current cars, for starters, are too big and too wide to promote any tangible sense of a battle for position that is not decided by undercuts or timely safety cars.
Research conducted earlier this year found that, after the first lap, on-track overtakes at Monaco for the past decade totalled 101 – there were 99 at the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix alone.
Is a race or a circuit defined solely by the number of overtaking opportunities? Of course not, but at a time when more fresh eyes are tuning in than ever before, there has to be something more than the annual procession around world-famous casinos.
Purists love Monaco for the blurry footage of their all-time favourites putting in sublime drives against the odds, at a time when nothing summed up the grit and glamour of F1 dovetailing like a Sunday in Monte Carlo.
Even off-track things have changed. The VIP guestlist for Monaco is now firmly underneath the likes of Miami and Las Vegas on the clipboard. Getting inside the velvet rope is much more important at those American races than in the principality.
Business is still conducted on the yachts moored in the harbour, of course, but that clientele, too, is finding new homes.
Saudi Arabia, Singapore and once again, Miami (there is a reason F1’s owners pick these places…) are where contracts get signed, handshakes are made, and deals are done.
Monaco will forever have its rightful place in F1 lore, but sadly it has now become stale. Ironically, it has been overtaken.
Monaco’s history is intrinsically tied to its grand prix – Stuart Codling
The Monaco Grand Prix epitomises the principality it calls home: tiny but fiercely independent, and as indomitable as the rocks upon which it perches. In the centuries since Francesco Grimaldi sneaked into the castle disguised as a Franciscan monk, then opened the doors to an invasion force led by his cousin (an origin story depicted in the Monegasque coat of arms), foreign powers have squabbled repeatedly over this small but strategically useful spot.
Likewise the grand prix has weathered assaults on its status.
Monaco’s land border is just 3.7 miles long, although reclamation projects and modern architecture have enabled it to expand outwards into the sea as well as upwards and downwards. The rocks which once sheltered pirates now enclose a bewildering network of subterranean road and rail tunnels.
Against this tapestry of continuous transformation, both geographically and demographically – two thirds of the population are ‘foreigners’ – the grand prix acts as a fundamental connection between Monaco’s past and present. When the race was first held in 1929, the principality’s chief source of income was casino receipts. While gambling remains an industry and a tourist draw, Monaco’s post-war reputation as a dissolute Nazi hangout required the ruling family to make a course-correction in which the grand prix played a central role.
Putting Monaco on the map was the point of hosting a grand prix in the first place. The Automobile Club de Monaco craved recognition from the Association Internationale des Automobile-Clubs Reconnus (the forerunner of the FIA) but this wasn’t forthcoming: the Monte Carlo Rally, which had been held since 1911, stopped short of the border. To be accredited as a national sporting body the ACM would have to stage a race on sovereign territory.
Antony Noghes, son of the ACM’s founder, duly walked the narrow streets until he alighted on a potential route which, by and large, remains the same to this day.
“This skirted the port,” Noghes said later, “passing along the quay and the Boulevard Albert Premier, climbed the hill of Monte Carlo, then passed round the Place du Casino, took the downhill zigzag near Monte Carlo Station to get back approximately to sea level and from there, along the Boulevard Louis II and the Tir aux Pigeons tunnel, the course came back to the port quayside.
“Today the roads comprising this circuit look as though they were made for the purpose.”
Despite the unpromisingly narrow layout, dirt-surfaced and criss-crossed by tramlines, the first events proved successful because Noghes attracted a high-quality international field. Post-war, though, Monaco was tainted by its association with the Vichy regime and by society scandal: Princess Charlotte, the heir presumptive, had divorced her husband and taken several lovers including her doctor and a notorious jewel thief, Rene Girier. Casino receipts were down 90%.
Upon acceding to the throne in 1949 – the year the Monaco Grand Prix had to be cancelled because the state coffers were running on empty – Charlotte’s son Rainier III set about rebuilding Monaco’s economy and reputation, diversifying into tourism and the attraction of foreign tax exiles. Hosting a prestigious international motor race would make Monaco a destination again.
And, barring a few financial issues in the early 1950s and the small matter of a bug going round in the early 2020s, the Monaco Grand Prix has been central to the principality’s success trajectory ever since.
