Monaco GP Historique 2012

Nelson Piquet once memorably described driving a Grand Prix car around Monaco as akin to trying to ride a bicycle around your bedroom and certainly, while it is not too difficult to drive a racing car around the circuit, it becomes a totally different animal when it comes to wringing out those last tenths of a second. Getting the line right, which may be totally different from attempting the same thing on a conventional circuit, avoiding the bumps and manhole covers and generally trying to string together a good lap cannot be easy and, more likely, must be highly daunting.

Julian Bronson must be braver than most, as well as considerably more skilled. He has won at the Monaco Historique before, and set off to do the same this year from the lofty heights of Mac Hulbert’s ERA cockpit. Watching him shave more and more off his lap times was a joy. The bare statistics show that he won again, but it was a great drive, pressed all the way by the sister car of Paddins Dowling. In some ways the latter’s was an almost better drive as his car was giving away 500-cc to the winner. German contemporary DTM refugee Frank Stippler provided a spectacle of car control, bringing his Maserati 8CM of 1934 vintage home after lurid power slides through Casino Square.