Circuit de Monaco - Historic by AtticusWhat is now the undisputed crown jewel of the Formula 1 world championship calendar started out as one of the first Grands Prix (or Grandes Épreuves) in the world, set amongst the calm villas of a lush Mediterranean town as early as 1929. Of course, it was just as beautiful as it is today with its remarkable seaside setting and with cars baking in the sunshine during the event's traditional late May date. It was used to be called the 'Race of a Thousand Corners' for the old circuit layout consisted of 10 turns and the race lasted for 100 laps.
That old layout looked like this.
It is rather unassuming at first sight, but despite having 'only' 10 turns, compared to what is there today, it was a different proposition entirely.
Let's see what some of the best drivers of the past had to say about some of its challenges.
Ste Devote - it is much quicker than nowadays; it's basically like jumping into a giant bowl and trying to maneuver into the only pipeline leading out of it. You have to stay patient on the entry and wait for the hole to appear. Then again, you can carry more speed than you think as the road turns sharply uphill at the apex and the compression itself helps you finish the corner.
"[Coming into it] you don't use all the corner, you don't use all the road..." - Jackie Stewart, 1971
"It is probably the fastest bend on the course." - Graham Hill, 1968
Chicane - the quickest of the four configurations used so far, the one sitting right at the bottom of the tunnel road descent, is the only one of the four which you can take flat-out. It's not that it's wider but, just as the exit of Ste Devote, the entry of it cleverly uses the compression from the road to help the car turn in.
"[It] takes more daring than skill, [...] [it] requires sheer guts. You enter it doing the best part of 110mph, just miss the sloping left hand wall and shoot through the gap to miss the sloping right hand wall. If you slide a bit too much in the middle of it you're liable to hit the right hand wall coming out and this will throw the car [off line]. If you enter it a little bit tight and clip the inside edge going in it will bounce the car into the right hand wall." - Bruce McLaren, 1967
Tabac - the objective is the same as it is today: try to get as close to the barriers as possible - but it's more difficult to do so due to the top of the ramp constantly trying to throw you off-balance on the exit.
"...Be careful to come off the brakes before you hit this slight ramp, otherwise the nose tends to hit the ground. [...] You just about miss the wall as you're accelerating away." - Graham Hill, 1968
Gazometre - you will be amazed that there is a bigger low-speed challenge than Loews, but this is it. You come into it faster so it's harder to get your braking right and the camber falls away to your left in a quite pronounced way on the exit.
Using the original .dat-frame of the game that is built using GPS data, I was able to recreate every nuance of this historical 10-turn layout as close to perfection as possible, despite it being more than 30 years old - although it still uses 2001 3D, just as the recently-released Imola Classic does. This Monaco layout saw many many great duels, served as arguably the most famous racing movie scene and witnessed amusing (and lucky) baths in the harbour, among others.
Enjoy adding your own chapter.
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Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2016 01:24PM by Atticus..