From 25 to 28 May 2023, Monaco will vibrate to the rhythm of the 80th Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix, along with the Formula 2 competition. Two Monegasque drivers will be vying to win: world championship runner-up Charles Leclerc and his brother Arthur.
Every square metre of the Monaco race track tells a story. Since 1929, every pilot has hung on, crashed, been injured or excelled on it,” says Michel Boeri, President of the Automobile Club de Monaco since 1972*. The sentence particularly resonates with the Leclerc brothers. Charles Leclerc, the darling of the Ferrari tifosi, is aiming to win the World Championship this year after finishing the 2022 season as runner-up, and has always dreamed of winning this race. The Monegasque driver knows the track like the back of his hand: as a child, he drove through these streets by bus on his way to school. “I’ve never known Monaco without F1, apart from during Covid in 2020. For me, F1 without Monaco is not F1,” he said in defence of the competition last year, after Liberty Media threatened to pull the Monegasque event from the Formula 1 calendar. After months of negotiation, the survival of Monaco Grand Prix – which along with the 24 Heures du Mans and the Indianapolis 500 is one of the three most prestigious motor races for a driver to win (the famous Triple Crown) – is assured for the next three years. This year there will be three other race series in addition to Formula one during the four days of competition: Formula 2, Formula 3 (which is making a big comeback in the Principality), and the Porsche SuperCup. We’ll be keeping a close eye on Arthur Leclerc’s performance in F1’s “waiting room”. Following in the footsteps of his brother and their father, a former F3 driver, he will make his F2 debut this year with Dams, having finished sixth in the final F3 ranking. The 22-year-old is a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy, the Scuderia’s youth team, and has experienced a meteoric rise after competing in F3 for two seasons, during which he won three races with the Prema team – France and the Netherlands in 2021 and Great Britain in 2022. At the end of May, the two brothers will race at home, in parallel contests. And perhaps one day we’ll see them duel in F1?
By Milena Radoman
