© Vladimir RysBulls’ Guide To: MonacoIt’s a race like no-other, but what does that really mean?
For the drivers, it’s the ultimate challenge – but the same is true for the rest of the team. The race weekend moves at a different tempo to others, with different demands placed upon everyone, from the garage crew working at very close quarters to the hospitality team turning it up to 11.
Monaco By Night© Vladimir Rys
The first thing to note about the Monaco Grand Prix is that the timetable is different. The two Friday practice sessions become Thursday practice sessions. The origins are in observance of a public holiday, but as the race has become decoupled from that, it’s become simply one of the quirks of the grand prix. It’s sometimes referred to as a ‘day off’ but if ever that was the case, it certainly isn’t now.
While the F1 cars don’t run on Friday, much of the rest of a busy programme does. In 2021 there will be qualifying sessions for Formula Regional and the Porsche Supercup, while F2 will have its first race of the weekend.
Checo In The Compact Monaco Garage© Getty Images
For the teams there’s plenty to do, with various bits and pieces of promotional activity. While the garage crew will take the opportunity of a blank day to work on the cars. It’s standard practice to strip the cars after FP2, changing the gearbox, potentially a power unit also, removing any extraneous sensors and the testing loom used in practice and so forth – and more time means greater opportunity to do a more thorough job.
An F1 team will always find ways to expand the operation to fill the time available, and thus the usual strip and rebuild that takes around six hours on a Friday evening, will become more detailed and complex. The crew finish a few hours earlier on Thursday than would otherwise be the case after FP2 and do a reasonably full day on Friday – though hopefully not a late night. It does mean everyone’s a little more energetic on Saturday that might be the case at other circuits.
The Monaco paddock is… bizarre, mostly because it’s not really a paddock in the traditional sense of a place where the team’s trucks and/or materiel is stored, and the cars are assembled. While quite a few circuits have staggered paddocks, Monaco is the only one used by F1 that is entirely divorced from the garages and pit lane.
It’s a case of force majeure: while the size of F1’s travelling circus has expanded over the decades, the city of Monte Carlo hasn’t. It does, however, have the harbourside Quai Antoine 1er, where the F1 paddock sets up shop in the modern era.
Checo With A Unique Arrival To The Paddock© Getty Images
The arrangement is unusual, with the paddock surrounded by wire fence: the harbour on one side; restaurants and bars on the other, and an exit into the middle of the Rascasse corner – at least when the track is open to foot traffic.
When the track is live, access is either via a swipe gate at the far end (heading out to sea) where the TV compound is located, or via a labyrinthine set of staircases through the quayside buildings, or over the track via a footbridge, and into the pit lane. It’s a good race for an extra pair of socks… there’s quite a lot of running back and forth in a typical day for many of the race crews.
The paddock operation itself is complicated. The narrow, layout of the town, designed around a horse and cart, isn’t particularly compatible with the articulated truck that forms the backbone of most paddock hospitality units – much less the fleet of them that supports the paddock build and the garage operation. Thus, there’s a carefully planned laagering system in place with trucks allowed down into town in a strictly choreographed order, with specific setup and unloading times for each team to prevent logjams. The trucks then disappear back up the hill to various car parks scattered around the Riviera. Some of them might be 15km away…
Red Bull, of course, have a unique approach in Monaco by shunning the paddock entirely. Instead, the Energy Station is super-sized for the Monaco Grand Prix, with a huge outdoor deck, swimming pool, DJ booths, and al fresco dining complete with outdoor bars. This is done by constructing it on a floating barge just along the coast, and towing it by tug boat to Monaco, where it is moored alongside the paddock. It’s quite the feat of marine engineering.
The Swimming Pool On The Monaco Holzhaus© Getty Images
However, sadly for the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix the Energy Station will be situated in the regular paddock alongside the other teams. Although there's every intention to return to the floating beauty in 2022.
The garages and pit lane in Monaco are unusual. The first thing to note is that they’re back-to-front. Rather than having the pit lane next to the start-finish straight – as used to be the case – we now have the garage block islanded in between the straight and the pit lane. This means the pit-signallers leaning over the pit wall do so at the back of the garage, in between the tyre stacks.
Checo Walks Down The Pit Lane© Getty Images
The second thing to note is that space is incredibly tight. In terms of width, the garage in Monaco is about half the size of the roomier units on the F1 calendar, which makes operations a little complicated. Because there isn’t room to go out sideways, the garages instead go up. Having been two-storey for many years, a third has recently been added.
The ground floor is strictly for things that absolutely have to be there. There’s just about space for the two car bays, and out at the rear are tyre stacks and a bodywork area where a floor can be laid out and worked upon. You may also have to share the space with a couple of trees. Emphasising the temporary nature of the garages, we do have to accommodate the local flora, and thus, if you’re unlucky with your garage allocation, the upper floors will have holes cut into the floors and walls to make way for the larger branches.
Directly above the car bays, you will find more of the usual back-of-garage equipment: spares bins, data racks, comms equipment, and so forth. You also have the ‘pit wall’ Because there isn’t a genuine pit wall (the pit lane itself looks out over the Swimming Pool exit and the approach to Rascasse), the pit stand is instead built inside, directly above the garage. While not ideal it does, at least, provide a view of the pit box.
A Great View For Pit Stop© Getty Images
Above that again, the new top deck now has balconies, which make them useful as a viewing area for VVIPs (because there definitely isn’t room in the garage for the usual viewing area) and more storage. The teams will have space for perhaps one truck in Monaco, parked at the far end of the paddock on the quayside, which can be accessed between the sessions. Everything else is out of town – but anything you might need in a hurry has to be in the garage, which makes the teams very good at concentrating on what they really, really need to have close at hand.
Does this compromise your weekend? It requires… adjustments. You would not, for example, want to be testing new floors in Monaco because there isn’t really space to get them on and off the car.
The final thing that’s unusual about Monaco is, of course, Monaco. The lap is shorter than anywhere else with a reduced race distance of 260km. The speeds are much lower (though it often looks faster) and the crowds closer. This year will obviously be more restrained, but it’s an incredible atmosphere in which to work. It’s also the only track that turns back into a public highway between the sessions, with road cars passing inches from the garage on the main straight, and the party in the Rascasse and the bars down on the quayside very clearly audible from the garages.
Turning Into Antony Noghès© Vladimir Rys
All together it contributes to a grand prix that feels very different to any other. It tends to be a harder weekend for most facets of the team: access is difficult, there’s more to do and less space in which to do it. It is a circuit at which tempers can become frayed – but working as a cohesive unit is absolutely essential.
Overwhelming, however, it’s a memorable experience that, for most people, it's one you really wouldn’t want to miss – because it really is a motor race like no other. Unique, in fact.
