I may have been coming here for 53 or so years the first sight of the blue Med its as special today as it was back in 1966.
I am writing this before first practice and the place is eerily quiet. For now. Tuesday evening we had the traditional football -soccer-game between Prince Albert’s 11 versus a motley collection of F1 drivers past and present. As most of them live here it wasn’t too difficult to put a team together. Old friend Mika Hakkinen, Felipe Massa, Nico Rosberg drove to the stadium in his race vintage Mercedes while others preferred their trusted scooters, for many just about the only way to get around town. Or what’s left of it. Every year there is a skyscraper missing only to reappear two years later taller and vastly more expensive. I just feel sorry for the people who bought apartments in the one behind..years ago they were assured that nothing would ever block their views. Well, not that sorry but you know what I mean.
That is not all. Monaco is expanding because they can only build so many skyscrapers so the next step as you can see from the enclosed picture is building outwards into the Med. I am told that one day the racetrack itself might look different but I will report back on that as soon as I know more details.
As far as the race is concerned there is a lot of hype concerning local boy Charles Leclerc. I’ve asked him how much he knows about the track, has he been around it? Oh, frequently he said, on the Number 6 bus. The number 6 is also my favorite, stops outside the hotel and takes you into town is a few minutes. And of course it is virtually free, there one thing Monaco can’t do is to double or treble bus prices. Everything else.. well will start tomorrow when suddenly the 10 euro menus will suddenly become 15 or 20. For those arriving from abroad the only thing to do is forget how much a coffee would have cost in New York or San Francisco, the quickest way to ruin the weekend is to start figuring it out. Frightening.
I came across a very interesting cast iron statue of my hero Ayrton Senna. Stunning.
Before you think that Monaco is one non- stop party, well, it may be for others. I am busy updating my book “Frankly Frankl which will publish just before the US GP in Austin.
I’ ve had a surprisingly large number of orders from people who’ve missed out on the first one.
In case this is the first time you’ve heard of it the price will be the same at 44.95 dollars and the book will be full of new stories about F1 greats such as Colin Chapman, Dan Gurney, more Cannonball pics and exclusive pictures from ace photographer Mark Sutton.
Print run 499 copies.
Must go now, the Ferrari team are staying at the same hotel and the PR supremo just invited me for an espresso.
Andrew Frankl
Monaco
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