The Race

In this fabled kingdom by the sea, drivers from all over the world compete as though their very lives depended on it--and they do.

Each May, Monaco shifts into high gear for the grandest of all Grand Prix races. Amid sunshine and balmy temperatures, the big transporters inch down cliffs, through narrow streets, to the harbor, where they unload their brutal Formula 1 machines. Gummy rear tires rasp and shudder on the pavement, the cars' differentials protesting the sharply crimped parking maneuvers as they're wheeled into position. Wrenches clink and snick as mechanics talk among themselves of the set-up sheets they follow in trying to adapt their ill-suited, over-muscled machines to the extremely rigorous demands of Monaco's one-of-a-kind circuit.

Frankly, racers are crazy even to consider running the Monaco course. It's about as wide as a garden path, as tightly coiled as a rattlesnake. Today's Formula 1 cars, on the other hand, seem as broad as a freeway and as fast as air-to-air missiles. Though the modern F1 car is more than seven feet wide (nearly a foot wider than a Cadillac Fleetwood), it's only three feet high, and its weight is massed less than knee high.

Short of driving one of these 1300-pound (dry weight) cars yourself, there's no way to imagine, let alone understand, what sustained, self-inflicted violence is all about. A recent test of a Formula 1 Renault Turbo showed acceleration from O-to-60 mph at 3.1 seconds, 0-to-100 in 5.2 seconds, 0-to-150 in ten seconds flat, and a full stop from 70 mph in a nosebleed-inducing 120 feet. Maximum lateral road-holding was four times the cornering force developed by the average street car.

Moreover, of all the racecourses special enough for Grand Prix use, only Monaco's allows you to get close enough to these spidery, flyweight juggernauts to have your very being vibrated, scorched and electrified by the intensity of what's going on. If Monaco can do that to you, think what it's doing to the drivers.

Back in the early 1800s, Monaco was a sleepy, run-down and forgotten little place on the side of a mountain, accessible only by boat or cowpath But when local visionary François Blanc talked his way into constructing the Casino de Monte Carlo, along came a brilliant development plan that turned Monaco into a glamorous repository of wealth, royalty and round-the-clock action.

But you get the feeling that once Monaco had been squeezed into all the usable mountainside around the bay, somebody realized, "Sacré bleu! We forgot the streets!" Of course, streets were there to begin with. It was just that the city fathers never had much horizontal room to work with. To this day, many of the reed-thin corridors that the principality boldly labels streets, avenues and boulevards spend as much time burrowing vertically as horizontally. (continued)

With the advent of automobiles, local bigwigs became quite good at motoring around the man-made canyons and chutes of their seaside resort. When they found themselves looking for a good way to promote Monaco's image in the late 1920s, they settled on an automobile race through the streets.

The first race at Monaco was a Formula Libre event, 1929's European equivalent of Run What You Brung. It was won by an expatriate Englishman named William Grover Williams and his nifty little Bugatti, beating out a humongous-engined Mercedes driven by the legendary Rudolf Caracciola. That the Bugatti didn't pull out its win until the Mercedes suffered a long pit stop failed to dampen anyone's enthusiasm for the principality's remarkable street-racing gambit, and Monaco fostered a whole new passion for in-town racing. Similar events prospered throughout Europe until poor crowd control and ever-faster cars resulted in so many fatalities that all but the most durable of the events were cancelled. That was Monaco.

Over the years, Monaco's safety record has been remarkably good. Since the World Driving Championship was created in 1950, only two drivers have pitched their cars into the harbor--Alberto Ascari and Paul Hawkins, both of whom were fished out by frogmen. In 1965, however, the chicane rose up and Lorenzo Bandini's Ferrari overturned and roasted him before it could be righted.

Today's course is virtually identical to 1929's. The only real difference is that where once there were only curbings, street lamps and shop windows to separate spectators and racers, there are now ribbons of guardrail. However, Monaco still permits fans to press closer to Grand Prix racing than anywhere else in the world.

For all the complications of driving Monaco, the basic job is really quite simple--keep the car between the shrunken funnel of guardrails for 156.4 miles (76 laps of the 20-turn, 2.058-mile circuit); execute more than 2000 gearshifts at an approximate rate of one every three seconds; make not so much as one mistake that anyone outside the car will notice; and keep the other 19 starters behind you for the entire distance. All this presumes, of course, that you've managed to take the lead at the start. Once somebody nips past, it's almost impossible to regain the position.

Driving your very first laps at Monaco is, strangely enough, much like tackling Indianapolis for the first time. Even though the tracks seem totally different, they leave the same impression: Lying in the car with your eyes only 30 inches off the deck, you have the feeling that the pavement is no more than four feet wide and that it makes a blind turn into ...what? It's like trying to fly an F-15 into a casket.

In the old days, you could see the drivers' faces. Some were grim, others merely preoccupied, one or two always looked maniacally thrilled, and then there were always some that looked downright horrified at their progress. Those expressions are still there, but now they're masked by full-face helmets. They're also bucketed bathtub-low in the most complex monocoque chassis imaginable. Drivers are strapped in like psychopaths and virtually mummified by layer upon layer of fire-retardant clothing (there's no such thing as fireproof suiting in this business). If it were possible to see their faces, the best time would be at the height of the frenzy to qualify well.

"More than at any other Grand Prix," says Jody Scheckter, 33-year-old two-time Grand Prix winner and 1979 World Driving Champion, "qualifying is the most important part of the Monaco weekend. If you're to have a prayer of winning, you've got to start from the front row. In qualifying, you have to extend yourself much further than normal, even to the point of crashing as long as the damage isn't too bad, simply to get the best time.

"In 1979, I thought I was extending myself, but Gilles Villeneuve [Scheckter's Ferrari teammate, who was killed last year before the Belgian Grand Prix] was faster. He came into the pits and said, 'I'm touching the guardrail at the swimming-pool corner,' so I thought, 'Jeezus, I'm obviously not trying hard enough!' So I went back out and, instead of judging and missing the guardrail by two inches at the apexes, I thought, 'Well, I'll hit it by two inches,' and I touched it every lap. About five laps from the end of practice, I came along pit straight at a hundred and thirty and my wheel just fell off. But I qualified fastest and went on to win the race."

Despite such antics, Scheckter contends that "Monaco is comparatively slow because it's so tight. Nevertheless, I was terrified the first time. After three 'slow' laps, I thought, 'Jesus Christ, I should be doing something else to make a living.' Not only do you really have to throw the car around, but you have to be neat about it, too. You can't clip even one barrier during the race, make a single irretrievable mistake, or you're out." (continued)

Though it often seems in fate's hands, it takes talent to be a winner at Monaco. Graham Hill won five times, Stirling Moss and Jackie Stewart won three apiece, and Juan Manuel Fangio, Niki Lauda and Jody Scheckter have each taken the prize twice. None of them won through luck.

The skill and daring of Grand Prix drivers are on display for all to see. Today, hundreds of thousands across Europe and even the United States (where there are world-championship events at Long Beach, Vegas and New York) follow the races. But it's Europe that embraces Formula 1 so passionately. Here, the automobile is still revered, and driving well and quickly is still a special brand of heroism. The country squire in his Jaguar, the doctor in his BMW, the industrial designer in his Alfa all have an abiding interest in driving. That's why Grand Prix stars have become celebrities throughout Europe.

When the Grand Prix drivers get to Monaco, all paradise breaks loose. Parties are held in their honor aboard virtually every yacht in the harbor Tanned and nubile starlets invade Monte Carlo, fresh from the previous week at the Cannes Film Festival. Such attractions are smugly taken in stride by the drivers, who consider them merely the perks of the good life. For when the weekend reaches its climax on Sunday, there's only one thing a driver wants after he's climbed from his car: to sit at the royal table of the Sporting Club as winner of the grandest Grand Prix of all.