Monaco Junior!

For five years, the Monaco Grand Prix played host to the cut-throat world of Formula Junior racing. The Grand Prix Monaco Junior was a prestigious event – the one that everybody wanted to win – with its victors going on to careers in the very top echelons of motorsport. Michael Oliver recounts the story of this brief but hectic series of races held in the Principality.

Formula Junior had originally been conceived by Count Giovanni (Johnny) Lurani and the Sporting Commission of the Automobile Club of Italy as an affordable means of bringing on new Italian single-seater talent. However, the idea gained widespread acceptance within Europe to the point where manufacturers from Italy, France, Switzerland and the UK undertook to build cars, and so it became an international formula almost by accident.