Get your motor running

The best place to rub Rolexes with the world's super-rich is at the Monaco Grand Prix, says Kevin Braddock

Visitors may head to the Monaco Grand Prix this month for the racing, the hotels, the parties, the cars, the girls, the yachts, the celebs or the sunshine. But there remains one other major reason why they go there: because everyone else goes there.

In this respect the über-rich, international jetsetters are no different to the package tour hordes at the opposite end of the social spectrum: they are people in search of a good time, albeit one with many more zeroes on the price tag. "Formula One is not just about sport and technology," says Renault's Flavio Briatore. "What attracts people is the glamour, the lifestyle, the drama." And when it comes to Monaco, the Renault team playboy-in-chief knows what he's talking about.
The Monaco GP, originally staged in 1929, is a byword for glamour and wanton excess, where guests understand that the true function of champagne is not to be drunk with friends, but sprayed over them. Such is the pressure and concentration of wealth, beauty and high net-worth individuals in the tiny, 2km sq principality-population 35,000-that during race weekend, the most intensive, exclusive socialising has been effectively offshored.

Spectators can watch F1 team cars zip round the iconic s-shaped circuit  and idly speculate as to exactly which kind of Bacchanalia is going on in the titanic gin palaces—such as Microsoft "accidental billionaire" Paul Allen's 127m yacht Octopus, Flavio Briatore's Force Blue or Roman Abramovich's Ecstasea (85m) or Pelorus (115m)—berthed brazenly in the marina.

The Monaco GP enjoys a sacrosanct status on the F1 programme, while questions have been raised over venerable circuits like Silverstone and Monza, in part because the event personifies the speedy, rarefied exclusivity of F1. Around 100,000 fans fail to acquire trackside tickets each year, but it is also true to say that the appeal of Monaco is less to do with the racing on the tortuous, narrow street circuit and more to do with partying, deal making and the act of being seen.

"Monaco is the best place to see F1. You have the world's most glamorous cars in the most glamorous location, but it's nine tenths a processional race," says Justin Hynes, editor of Red Bull's daily trackside F1 newspaper, The Red Bulletin. "The streets are too narrow to overtake, therefore whoever wins the qualifiers on Saturday will win the race."

Hynes says that visiting crowds break down into several distinctive groups united by a common sensibility: they consider themselves "très VIP". Diehard race fans will make a pilgrimage to viewing spots at the hairpin near the La Rascasse restaurant and the paddock. The sizeable contingent of Euro-money playboys and Côte D'Azur habitués helicopter in from Nice airport and descend on La Rascasse in the evening for drinks and dinner before partying at the key nightspots of the Amber Lounge (owned by Eddie Irvine's sister Sonia) and the salubrious Jimmy'z, where a round of beers can be purchased for several hundred euros. If you can tear you eyes away from the ranks of Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Aston-Martins parked outside the ultra-chic Hotel Fairmont—where a weekend suite costs up to £20,000—you will spot a conspicuously chic crowd of mature men and young Eastern European women doing their bit for relations across the generation divide.

But it is the invisible but ubiquitous über-rich—many from the big sponsorship categories of computing, comms, tobacco, engineering and petrochemical—who make up the mass of race visitors. For them, Monaco GP weekend is where business is done at the same time as partying, gambling, eating and carousing—they are, in fact, the same thing in the excessively expensive, overdressed and slickly speculative demimonde once termed "a sunny place for shady people."

"If you're a team, it's a chance to wring £20m of sponsorship from a manufacturer, so all the stops are pulled out," says Hynes. "If it's McLaren and Vodafone, for example, all the Vodafone big wigs will be there for a big night out at the Casino in the Grand Square."

Widget manufacturers, team crew, sponsorship suits, hangers on, plus the occasional celebrity extending their stay after the Cannes Film Festival, will all teem around a select circuit of hotels and bars and occasionally Stars 'n' Bars, a glorified burger joint, often frequented by ex-F1 drivers. An evening at David Coulthard's Columbus hotel in Fontvieille is "the done thing", assuming one has already "done dinner" at Alain Ducasse's Louis XV restaurant.

Yet the real action is on the yachts—berthing prices rise by 300 per cent over the weekend—where global brands, such as Intel and HP, throw lavish events. Entry is by invitation only, unless you have a serious way with words, or you are James Bond.

There are several ways around this. One is to hire your own yacht. And one is to hire a concierge service, such as London-based Quintessentially, which offers packages for members—on top of the annual £750 subscription—and can organise "under-the-rope" access to inaccessible parties, restaurants, hotels and the paddock. "Last year we got people onto Eddie Jordan's yacht," says the concierge company's Clementine Brown. "It's never really clear, until the last moment, which the big parties will be. In the last couple of years the Dolce Vita ball and Fashion Rocks were the big events."

In 2006, rubberneckers enjoyed views of Monaco regulars, including Petra Nemcova, Jay-Z, Bono, Sarah Ferguson and Penelope Cruz. This year's launch of Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Thirteen is likely to mean Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Al Pacino will be in the vicinity.
If none of the glitz and glamour appeals, there remains the trivial matter of a motor race, held on the Sunday afternoon. Now that the once indomitable Michael Schumacher is out of the picture, it might even be entertaining.