The importance of Monaco for F1

If ever there was a cham­pi­onship for the best val­ue for mon­ey deal in F1 then the Mona­co Grand Prix would sure­ly take vic­to­ry. Such is its impor­tance that the Auto­mo­bile Club de Mona­co (ACM) is one of only a hand­ful of F1 pro­mot­ers that keeps all the rev­enue from its track­side adver­tis­ing and has the dis­tinc­tion of pay­ing no fee to host the race. And what a race it is.

The Mona­co Grand Prix is one of motor racing’s pres­ti­gious ‘Triple Crown’ races, along with the Indi­anapo­lis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The absence of a host­ing fee puts the street race through the tiny prin­ci­pal­i­ty on a firm finan­cial foot­ing, but it is the track­side adver­tis­ing gain which is one of its biggest boons.

The city transforms

“Adver­tis­ing is one of the tak­ings which makes up, with those from grand­stand tick­et sales, the means to recoup the nec­es­sary funds to put on the event,” says ACM pres­i­dent Michel Boeri adding “it is true that oth­er cir­cuits pre­fer to del­e­gate the charge of this activ­i­ty. This isn’t the case with Mona­co.” It pays off.

“The Grand Prix is cer­tain­ly the best-known Mon­e­gasque sport­ing event because it is the most broad­cast,” says Mr Boeri. “It has 900 hours of live tele­vi­sion and 1.2 bil­lion view­ers. For the image of the prin­ci­pal­i­ty and its local busi­ness it is one of the peak moments of the year.”

The prin­ci­pal­i­ty has the small­est capac­i­ty of all the cir­cuits at just 37,000 — 22,000 in the grand­stands and 15,000 gen­er­al admis­sion — although unlike oth­ers it has a sig­nif­i­cant non-tick­et­ed atten­dance. “Over the four days of the event it can be esti­mat­ed quite pre­cise­ly that there are around 200,000 spec­ta­tors who fol­low the Grand Prix from the grand­stands, the bal­conies of the build­ings around the cir­cuit and also from the boats in the har­bour,” says Mr Boeri.

He adds that “of course Sun­day is the peak day: the city lit­er­al­ly explodes. It is esti­mat­ed that there are 100,000 peo­ple present in the prin­ci­pal­i­ty which ordi­nar­i­ly has a res­i­dent pop­u­la­tion of 30,000 inhab­i­tants.” They fill Mona­co’s tiny 1.95 square kilo­me­tre foot­print to burst­ing but it is the streets, not the state’s bor­ders, which need rein­forc­ing.

Trans­form­ing a city into a race track is a far from an easy task. “The con­struc­tion wait­ing peri­ods were reduced, to opti­mise busi­ness use, to six weeks of con­struc­tion and two weeks of decon­struc­tion,” says Mr Boeri. Around 1,100 tonnes of grand­stands, 900 tonnes of pit garages and 33 kilo­me­tres of bar­ri­er are used and a per­ma­nent team of 50 Mona­co engi­neers are in charge of the instal­la­tion.

Mr Boeri says the tough­est chal­lenge for such a small state is “the coor­di­na­tion of 500 trail­ers which must trav­el into the city, dur­ing the day and night, to sup­ply mate­r­i­al for the con­struc­tion and of course the sub­se­quent decon­struc­tion. To that, one can add the mate­r­i­al deliv­ered by rail­way which doesn’t sim­pli­fy the prob­lem, but counts towards the nec­es­sary stocks.”

Recipe for success

Once the track is in place even more work­ers swamp the scene. Mr Boeri explains that “the Grand Prix puts over 600 com­mis­saries in place to which 300 to 400 vol­un­tary work­ers are added, divid­ed between all the com­mis­sions, over 500 mon­i­tors and secu­ri­ty ser­vice per­son­nel, 40 first aid doctors…This list isn’t restric­tive; in effect the event lists every state ser­vice — police, fire­men, crowd con­trol police, hos­pi­tal, Red Cross, civ­il engi­neer­ing depart­ment, town plan­ning and clean­ing depart­ments — in all a total of over 3,000 peo­ple.”

These high over­heads mean that although Mona­co pays no race host­ing fee and keeps all its track­side adver­tis­ing rev­enues its tick­et prices this year start at $194 and rise to $1,124. Accord­ing to Boeri “the tak­ings from the Grand Prix are less than the expen­di­ture.” He explains that the ACM receives a state sub­sidy of $7 mil­lion to host the Grand Prix and with this includ­ed, the total bud­get for the race is around $35 mil­lion.

Vis­i­tors come to the site of the on-track bat­tles long after the race has end­ed and Mr Boeri says that the impact is felt “not so much dur­ing the Grand Prix peri­od as all year round, through the num­ber of con­gress­es, sem­i­nars and launch­es, tourists and pro­fes­sion­als choos­ing the prin­ci­pal­i­ty. The impact to the eco­nom­ic plan is undoubt­ed­ly pos­i­tive.”

It is a dream pack­age of pro­mo­tion for Mona­co, and Mr Boeri mod­est­ly remarks that “our mar­ket­ing plan is quite well bal­anced”. How­ev­er, he acknowl­edges that Mona­co needs to rev up just to stand still against the cur­rent com­pe­ti­tion of space-age cir­cuits that cost hun­dreds of mil­lions to build. “If we want to sur­vive we must, more than ever, make sure that we stay in the first bunch of Euro­peans, using our tech­ni­cal know-how, keep­ing the con­fi­dence of the inter­na­tion­al author­i­ties, spon­sors, car man­u­fac­tur­ers and rac­ing dri­vers, and con­tin­u­ing to mod­ernise the course with the sup­port of the Mon­e­gasque state.”

He adds that “with a lot of work and luck, we can hope to main­tain the place that is ours today. We must realise that it’s nec­es­sary to evolve, to ban­ish ama­teurism and select only the best in rela­tion to their skills. We should man­age, in a mod­ern and com­mer­cial way, what has become an enter­tain­ment busi­ness, and take on board all the risks that this type of activ­i­ty entails.”

His cau­tion is admirable, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a loca­tion which is so close­ly con­nect­ed with gam­bling. Nev­er­the­less, it prob­a­bly isn’t nec­es­sary because when it comes to mak­ing mon­ey in motor­sport, the Mona­co Grand Prix is the safest bet in town.

THE JEWEL IN F1’S CROWN

First held in 1929, the Mona­co Grand Prix is one of few con­stants in a motor­sport land­scape that has changed almost beyond recog­ni­tion over the last 87 years.

A nar­row street course lined by unfor­giv­ing bar­ri­ers that allow lit­tle room for error, Mona­co is the race that every dri­ver most wants to win to immor­talise their names along­side the likes of Sir Jack­ie Stew­art, Ayr­ton Sen­na and Michael Schu­mach­er, as well as mod­ern stars Lewis Hamil­ton, Sebas­t­ian Vet­tel and Fer­nan­do Alon­so.

As one of the few cir­cuits where a driver’s raw tal­ent can tran­scend the abil­i­ties of their machin­ery, Mona­co has forged a rep­u­ta­tion as a prov­ing ground over the years.

Max Verstappen’s fear­less dis­play in 2015 dis­pelled the the­o­ry that you can’t over­take at Mona­co and was the lat­est in a long line of break­out per­for­mances in the prin­ci­pal­i­ty. Ron­nie Peterson’s sec­ond place to Stew­art in 1971 helped the mer­cu­r­ial Swede to realise his fright­en­ing poten­tial, while Sen­na and Ste­fan Bellof’s charg­ing dri­ves in mon­soon con­di­tions in 1984 marked both out as future stars.

Mona­co has also thrown up plen­ty of sur­pris­es in its time. The Schu­mach­er-Fer­rari axis was at the height of its dom­i­nance in 2004 when the Ger­man missed out on a record-equalling sixth vic­to­ry after mak­ing con­tact with Juan Pablo Mon­toya in the tun­nel behind the safe­ty car, open­ing the door for Jarno Trul­li to score his first and only grand prix win. Eddie Irvine took a rare podi­um for Jaguar in 2001, while French­man Olivi­er Panis enjoyed his day of days in 1996, win­ning his only grand prix in a race only four cars fin­ished.