Thursday was the first day of track action in Monaco. For @DieterRencken it was also an opportunity to grill the team bosses on the day’s pressing matters before enjoying a bit of Red Bull hospitality.
Thursday 8:30am
It seems strange to prepare for track activities on a Thursday, but this is Monaco weekend, so everything and anything is kind of topsy-turvy, particularly as this year’s race is not scheduled for the traditional Ascension Day weekend due to later Easter festivities.A minor point, you may believe – save that today is a normal working day, so business traffic mixes it with race goers. Factor in that it marks the second day of French Rail’s two-day strike, and you’ll understand why the first 30-odd kilometres from Menton – the last town before the French-Italian border, where I elect to stay during race weekend due to affordability – took 25 minutes, and the final two kilometres over double that.
10am
I’d planned to be in situ by 0900 but delays mean I’m at my desk in the Media Centre overlooking Tabac almost an hour later. Still, Liberty Media’s decision to shift the weekend timetable by an hour means I don’t miss a thing.
I sign for my FanVision handheld device – on loan for the year after the company’s return to F1 – and set about navigating its various menus. We’ll publish a full product review once I’m totally au fait with the device, which is about the size of an iPhone Plus.
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1pm
The later start to the first day’s proceedings necessitates a shift to 1pm local time for the FIA ‘Friday’ press conference – traditionally attended by team principals or other senior team personnel. I took advantage of the opportunity to follow up with McLaren Group CEO Zak Brown on the story we broke last Saturday and it was rather satisfying to be given recognitionfor revealing the Latifi investment:
Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines, Racefans.net) Zak, with reference to Michael Latifi, you called it exceedingly good news, or very good news – yet your group kept his identity hidden behind a BVI – British Virgin Islands – entity until we revealed it. Is that sort of opacity any good for a company like McLaren? And second, after his investment, what is the shareholder breakdown now of the Group please?
ZB: Shareholder breakdown is, I believe, published, so anyone that’s interested in that can look that up accordingly. And any time you have, whether it’s a sponsor announcement, a driver announcement, an investor announcement, you have a time in place in which you hope to announce that and you did a good job in getting ahead of that story. So that news was going to come out in due course. We chose to accelerate that news after the word got out.
Also in the conference, Christian Horner’s confirmation that Liberty will take the next step in its negotiations with teams over F1’s post-2020 landscape on Friday suggests I’ll be doing a lot of digging during the weekend.
After the presser it’s time to grab a (late-ish) lunch at Mercedes – Thai beef salad, cold meats and cheese, followed by diced fruit and lemon tart.
5pm
The day’s round of media scrums starts, with the most enjoyable session being that with Andrew Green, Force India’s Technical Director, who invariably throws some left-field balls into discussions. That sort of thinking has enabled the team to punch well above its financial weight.
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9pm
The Energy Station, built for just one weekend per year, stands as a superb testament to the company’s commitment to F1. It weighs over 800 tons, is manned by a staff of 120 – even temporary staff such as cleaners are in corporate-wear, albeit ‘utilitarian’ versions – and takes 21 days to construct every year in Imperia up the Italian coast.
Disassembly takes the same again, and then it’s is stored for 10 months until the next race. This video reveals the full extent of the Energy Station (as it’s produced by FOM we can’t embed it here.)
You can watch the process of setting up the Energy Station here:
11pm
Return to Menton. Thankfully the trip takes but half an hour. The roads are absolutely deserted, which provides food for thought: is Monaco gradually losing its lustre?
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Phylyp (@phylyp)
25th May 2018, 10:30
That was very gracious of Zak. As a point of comparison, I’ve been following Telsa’s fortunes in the media, and Elon has an extremely fractious relationship with the media, so that’s how another person might react. And this is especially given Tesla need the media far more than McLaren’s F1 team.
Jere (@jerejj)
25th May 2018, 11:04
Great content as always, but there’s just one thing to point out:
”this year’s race is not scheduled for the traditional Ascension Day weekend due to later Easter festivities.”
– To be precise, it should read ‘this year’s Ascension Day weekend isn’t/wasn’t scheduled for the same week as the Monaco GP’ or something like that. The point is; The Monaco GP takes place at precisely the same time of the month as last year (and has traditionally done so), while the Ascension day’s spot varies on a yearly basis as the earliest possible date for it is April 30th, while the latest is June 3rd.
Dieter Rencken (@dieterrencken)
25th May 2018, 13:51
I don’t whether you’re aware of the fact that the reason for the timings of the Monaco Grand Prix – track activities on Thursday and off-day for F1 on Fridays – has everything to do with Ascension Day weekend and the local businesses and streets in Monaco being open on Friday for commercial reasons. Once they added support races that changed for part of Fridays, but the basic F1 format remained.
Historically the race was scheduled for that long weekend, and that format was adopted by F1 when it became a world championship round. Indeed, initially the F1 calendar was shaped by the Monaco Grand Prix on Ascension Day weekend, working outwards.
I have compared every grand prix weekend since 1950 – excluding 1951-4, when the race did not hold WC status – and the applicable Ascension Day Thursdays. Between 1950 and 1978 it was held over Ascension Day weekend, with one exception: 1957, when the race weekend clashed with the Indianapolis 500, then a round of the world drivers’ championship. In 1979 the Ascension Day weekend was 24/5 whereas the race was held on 13/5, so not one of the two last weekends in May as you contend. We’ll return to your contention again shortly.
Between 1980 – 1998, after which Bernie Ecclestone acquired F1’s commercial rights and thus the rights to determine the F1 calendar, there was a further exception, namely 1983 – when Ascension Day was 12 May and the race on 22/5. So, for the 50 years under the FIA there were three exceptions, one of which was due to a clash with another WC qualifying round.
Since 2000 there have been eight exceptions, mainly due to calendar expansion which meant it was not always practical to work outwards from the Ascension Day weekend, but the Ascension Day weekend format remained. Still, more races have occurred during the weekend than not, so my statement is more correct than incorrect, as you maintain.
As for your contention that “The Monaco GP takes place at precisely the same time of the month as last year (and has traditionally done so)” this is patently incorrect, regardless of how you measure “traditionally”: In 1956 it took place on 13/5 and in 1959 on May 10. In 1961/2 the dates were respectively 14/5 and 3/6. In 1967 the race date was 7/5 and in 1973 it was again 3/6, yet in both instances it coincided with Ascension day weekend.
More recently, in 2000, the date was 4/6, again coinciding with Ascension Day (1/6).
Feel free to double check any of the information – the website is: http://www.world-timedate.com/holidays/christian_holidays/ascension_day_date_list.php?year_range=1950
All I ask is that before you criticising my work any further you ensure you are in full command of all the facts.
Matteo (@m-bagattini)
25th May 2018, 14:23
@dieterrencken seriously dropped the mic here
GeeMac (@geemac)
25th May 2018, 15:46
This is the quintessence of the “hold all my calls, someone is wrong on the internet” memes…
BasCB (@bascb)
27th May 2018, 12:35
Wow, thanks @dieterrencken for that awesome overview of when Monaco held its GP – traditionally going with the Ascension Day, as you made quite clear!
Dieter Rencken (@dieterrencken)
25th May 2018, 12:51
I don’t whether you’re aware of the fact that the reason for the timings of the Monaco Grand Prix – track activities on Thursday and off-day for F1 on Fridays – has everything to do with Ascension Day weekend and the local businesses and streets in Monaco being open on Friday for commercial reasons. Once they added support races that changed for part of Fridays, but the basic F1 format remained.
Historically the race was scheduled for that long weekend, and that format was adopted by F1 when it became a world championship round. Indeed, initially the F1 calendar was shaped by the Monaco Grand Prix on Ascension Day weekend, working outwards.
I have compared every grand prix weekend since 1950 – excluding 1951-4, when the race did not hold WC status – and the applicable Ascension Day Thursdays. Between 1950 and 1978 it was held over Ascension Day weekend, with one exception: 1957, when the race weekend clashed with the Indianapolis 500, then a round of the world drivers’ championship. In 1979 the Ascension Day weekend was 24/5 whereas the race was held on 13/5, so not one of the two last weekends in May as you contend. We’ll return to your contention again shortly.
Between 1980 – 1998, after which Bernie Ecclestone acquired F1’s commercial rights and thus the rights to determine the F1 calendar, there was a further exception, namely 1983 – when Ascension Day was 12 May and the race on 22/5. So, for the 50 years under the FIA there were three exceptions, one of which was due to a clash with another WC qualifying round.
Since 2000 there have been eight exceptions, mainly due to calendar expansion which meant it was not always practical to work outwards from the Ascension Day weekend, but the Ascension Day weekend format remained. Still, more races have occurred during the weekend than not, so my statement is more correct than incorrect, as you maintain.
As for your contention that “The Monaco GP takes place at precisely the same time of the month as last year (and has traditionally done so)” this is patently incorrect, regardless of how you measure “traditionally”: In 1956 it took place on 13/5 and in 1959 on May 10. In 1961/2 the dates were respectively 14/5 and 3/6. In 1967 the race date was 7/5 and in 1973 it was again 3/6, yet in both instances it coincided with Ascension day weekend.
More recently, in 2000, the date was 4/6, again coinciding with Ascension Day (1/6).
Feel free to double check any of the information – the website is: http://www.world-timedate.com/holidays/christian_holidays/ascension_day_date_list.php?year_range=1950
All I ask is that before you criticising my work any further you ensure you are in full command of all the facts.
Ju88sy (@)
25th May 2018, 19:16
@dieterrencken Thanks, as usual interesting read! Great way to start the race weekend picking up your diary articles.
Thoroughly recommend a Monaco race weekend to anyone, as soon as the days on track activities end the party starts!
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
25th May 2018, 20:47
@dieterrencken Thanks for the report. Hopefully the trains will be running to time for the rest of the Grand Prix.