The Good Life France Magazine SPRING 2016 | Page 73

The history of the Monaco Grand Prix stretches back to the Roaring Twenties and the first race in the Principality (14th April 1929) was organised by cigarette magnate Antony Noghès under the auspices of the Automobile Club de Monaco. It was won by William Grover-Williams driving a Bugatti who pocketed prize money of 100,000 French francs. An interesting character, he served in the Second World War working as a special agent for the Special Operations Executive (a British-based intelligence organisation) inside France. Arrested by the intelligence agency of the Nazi Party towards the end of the war, he was executed at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1945.

The race, in actual fact, originally formed part of the pre-Second World War European Championship and became incorporated into the F1 World Drivers’ Championship in 1950. Italian-born driver, Giuseppe ‘Nino’ Farina, driving for the Alfa Romeo team, took the honours that year becoming F1’s first World Champion.

But the first driver to actually win multiple championships was Alberto Ascari in 1952 and 1953 driving a Lancia while those winning three races in a row fall to Graham Hill, 1963-65 (BRM), Alain Prost, 1984-86 (McLaren) and Ayrton Senna, 1989-91 (McLaren) although Senna’s first victory at Monaco was in 1987 driving for Colin Chapman’s Norfolk-based Team Lotus. He also took the chequered flag in two straight wins in 1992 and 1993 (again for McLaren). Nico Rosberg - son of Finnish 1982 Formula One World Champion, Keke Rosberg - joins this illustrious club after winning the 2015 Monaco Grand Prix thus making it three in a row driving for the Mercedes team beating his arch rival and teammate, Lewis Hamilton, because of a bungled pit stop that caught Hamilton out fair and square.

Start of the Monaco Grand Prix, 1931