One thing that was tossed off in passing during the pre-race show for Monaco this year was the comment that “Monaco was losing its shine as Formula One’s crown jewel event”. To me, this is a ridiculous thing to say — for one, I’ve been watching F1 since the late ‘90s and even back then there was commentary that F1 cars had no business winding their way through that narrow cattlepath. Subsequent changes to both the track and the formula have done absolutely nothing to improve this state of affairs, and in fact at the front of the pack today all the passes were done under pit conditions — and even with that there wasn’t any change in position one to five from the beginning of the race to the end.
If Monaco is “glamorous” it is only so for the participants — for those of us watching on TV around the world, it is a boring processional race and always has been.
