Monte Carlo is the European Las Vegas, but these two towns have more in common than gambling, warm climate and waiters expecting big tips. Both places are linked by the feeling that they are from another world, somewhere unreal. The rising sun throws an unusual peach light onto the towering blocks of pastel-coloured apartment buildings and hotels in which most of the modest population of thirty thousand people live. It is exceptional that the residents don’t pay income tax, unless they are French. And the number of exotic cars is incredible. All you have to do is stand by the turn into the Casino for a moment.
In addition, Monaco is obviously unusually packed full of motorsports. The WRC series starts every year in Monte Carlo, and the whole F1 circus comes to this small town at the start of the season. Both of them are a good reason to be happy and to visit.
I have visited both, and both are a phenomenal experience. Formula 1 is a wonderful, grandiose and flashy event where you don’t know whether to first look at the sports and luxury cars everywhere, at the races or at the necklines. The Monte Carlo Rally is something like war. You see joy and desperation, great battles and even greater victories and defeats. It is the start of the racing season, and it is also one of the rallies which every driver wants to win. Everybody knows that it is the oldest and undoubtedly the best-known race in the World Rally Championship, and possibly some have recently read that a Škoda, then known under the Laurin & Klement brand, started the second rally. It was Sunday, January 21, 1912, and Count Alexander Kolowrat-Krakowský started out from Vienna.
The first race was arranged by Prince Albert I of Monaco. The race was not run as you know it today: it began with a star drive in which the crews started in various cities in Europe and went through checkpoints along the way to Monte Carlo. In Monte Carlo, then there were only skill runs and some speed trials, later there were drives in the mountains above the city and points were awarded for them independently. The system worked like this until the 1970s, when the race became part of the World Championship.
When Count Kolowrat-Krakowský started the first year, Vienna was one of the ten places where crews could start the star drive from. He drove a 1,319 km route, and on the way to Monaco, the crews checked in at various points. In Monte Carlo, they could get additional points for the car’s elegance, its technical condition, and, for example, the comfort it provided to the crew. It’s hard to say how many points Count Kolowrat received for comfort when his car was an open-top and along the route temperatures fell to -18 °C… In 1937 and 1938, other Czechs, the crew of Zdeněk Pohl and Jaroslav Hausman, started in a Škoda Popular Sport roadster, first from Athens, then from Palermo in Sicily; of the cars starting from there, only four reached the destination!
Apart from during the two world wars and the periods just after them (rallies started again after the First World War in 1924, and after the Second World War in 1949), the Monte Carlo Rally has continued until today. As with other traditional rallies, it remained true to its original format for several decades, but after the Second World War, it slowly started to change into a modern rally with speed tests. But starting in different places was retained until 1991.
Today, the Monte Carlo Rally does not start in multiple places, and everything begins in the town of Gap. Here, you can find the service park, and Thursday’s first stage also starts here, followed by another two night-speed tests. On Friday, events move southwest of the town for two circuits of three speed tests, totalling 125 kilometres of full-on driving.
On Saturday, drivers return to a more well-known environment. The day includes two stages, each repeated twice, before the cars return to Gap to be serviced for the last time. They then start the long trip to Monaco. Sunday traditionally belongs to the Alpes Maritimes mountain area over the Principality of Monaco. The highlight of the day is the legendary Col de Turini special stage, which is again raced twice. The Night of Long Knives (in some versions called the Night of Long Fires), which is a classic part of the Monte Carlo Rally, is raced here. It involves classic mountain tests in the Alpes Maritimes north of Monaco, whose unique atmosphere and demanding weather conditions always make them among the most popular nights of the year for motorsport enthusiasts.
Whether you’re going to Monaco as a fan or a driver, the Monte Carlo Rally is unique thanks to its combination of extreme conditions. It’s a race on tarmac, but the Alps in January can bring the kind of weather you can imagine —snow, ice or dry tarmac, or even all of the above in a single stage. With regard to the track’s profile, you are unusually close to the cars and their drivers, but it also applies that if you want to be in the most attractive places, then you have to be there on time. Every driver will tell you that the correct setup of a car for the Monte Carlo Rally is not simple. Tyre selection is even more of a lottery. At any one stage you can experience snow, ice, and dry tarmac. This sometimes leads to strange solutions, such as the simultaneous use of tyres with studs and dry tyres, always in pairs on opposite corners of the car.
At other times, all bets are placed on one card, where in some sections you must be careful and elsewhere you can gain time. Or lose it. “I remember well how I fought it one time,” recalls Martin Prokop. “We started on soft slicks, and that didn’t work. Then we put studs in front and slicks in the rear, which didn’t work on dry roads at all, but was a little better on the snow. We went so slowly that somebody could have walked next to us. Then we tried what we saw the others were using, i.e., tyres opposite each other, the left front and right rear with slicks and tyres with studs on the other two. It worked surprisingly well. On dry roads a slick at the front helps with turning, and thanks to the studs, the car can brake in snow. I had to be careful on snow and make sure that the slicks weren’t spinning—but then the rear tyre would catch. And vice versa.”
Yes, this is the Monte… But it is a special phenomenon. It might not be the most beautiful or the hardest race, but if you visit one rally in your life, it should seriously be Monte Carlo. Sebastian Loeb won here seven times, and it seemed it would be a record that could never be beaten, but this year, reigning world champion Sébastien Ogier from France registered his eighth triumph, and everything is different now.
