Monaco Grand Prix 2016: It's the ultimate track - you over-drive, you'll end up in the wall

Monaco Grand Prix starts at 1pm on Sunday
Mark Thompson/Getty Images
Johnny Herbert27 May 2016

Driving around Monaco is like being a ballerina at the wheel of a Formula One car. You’re on your toes all the way around, tip-toeing around every inch of the circuit.

Every single driver is on the edge for the duration of the lap. There are so many difficult parts to it: Sainte Devote up the hill to Casino, down the hill to Mirabeau, the tunnel and the dark, and exiting that back into the light.

There are drivers I know who don’t enjoy it. It’s daunting for a lot of people and it takes a hell of a lot of belief to pull it off. If you feel intimidated by Monaco, it will spit you out. I loved it; the entire challenge of it, of breaking everything down so it didn’t feel like you were going 175mph coming out of the tunnel, more like, say, 120mph.

Okay, it wasn’t quite like driving to the supermarket for your weekly shop but mentally you wanted to slow everything down as much as you possibly could to make it feel second nature.

It’s the ultimate track, especially in qualifying. It’s the ultimate in terms of pushing as much as you can and taking risks. If you over-drive it, you’ll end up in the wall somewhere.

You’re even more focused than at any other race. Tracks have a lot of run-off areas but not here. You’re playing with millimetres the whole way around. The margin for error is minuscule.

I’ve come a cropper here before, most drivers have, even the late, great Ayrton Senna. My turn was in 1997. It was so wet but I was running pretty well in the race until I aquaplaned and went off in the same spot as Max Verstappen last year. You hit the barrier hard and it’s a violent and sudden deceleration.

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But that crash was not in my mind for a second when I returned the following year — and it won’t be in Max’s mind, either. He’ll be thinking that he could genuinely win this race.

I don’t ever remember coming out of the car after qualifying on a high because there’s never a perfect lap. You always felt you could have done more and I know Ayrton, despite some of his drives here, was never totally satisfied.

But there were massive individual moments of satisfaction around the track. Getting that consistency the whole way around is very hard.

I remember at Tabac, just before the swimming pool, I used to always try to hit the Armco barrier on the exit with the rear of the car, just to show I was using the full width of the track. I never hit it hard but I liked to hear it resonate right down the barrier. I got a buzz from that. You pretty much had to do that somewhere around the lap if you wanted to properly push.

There were always butterflies and nerves for qualifying and the race but it’s how you control them and how you use them to your advantage to get the job done. As soon as the engine started, the adrenalin kicked in and you were just focused on the job. All you wanted to do then was go as fast as you possibly could.

Of course, that buzz has gone for me but it gives me an understanding of what the drivers are experiencing. I loved it and still do, and the fans love seeing drivers on the ragged edge around here.

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