Oysters, champagne, a 120 mph hot lap with Jenson Button and the great Kim Kardashian stakeout — a three-day diary of F1's most exclusive weekend.
Fernando Alonso enters the Monaco paddock in a Boss suit; Kim Kardashian watches from the Ferrari garage; Kimi Antonelli celebrates his historic win. People pay good money to experience the famed Monaco Grand Prix.
It is, undoubtedly, ground zero for some of the most obscene wealth in the world: Billionaire-owned yachts crowd the harbor, Hollywood stars flock to join in on the fun, and the afterparties don’t stop until the Côte d’Azur sun comes up. , for three days across the 83rd installment of the jewel in the F1 crown, was given an exclusive peek into this life — the oysters, the champagne, the boat trips and bubbles.
We were hosted byTeam, invited into their suites and shown why film, TV and music A-listers can’t help themselves from getting in on the action.. I was privy to it all: The clambering fans waving their phones in the face of the sport’s brightest stars, the eye-watering costs of a ticket to F1’s most exclusive post-race bash and, yes, theAfter waking to the sound of Mediterranean waves crashing softly against the rocks below my sea view room, I’m picked up from the Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat peninsula in a private Mercedes-Benz.
I got in late from London last night, and it’s here that the U.K.-based Pop-Up Hotel has rented an extravagant villa on the waterfront, neighboring France’s Rothschild estate. Villa prices start at £9,995 per person, with exclusive access to the Pop-Up yacht. It’s docked trackside in the Monaco harbor and hosted by former F1 legend Michael Bleekemolen.
The other guests I cross paths with showcase a real mix of personalities among Pop-Up’s clientele: high-earning finance professionals hailing from London, and an American family who are evidently die-hard F1 fans. All of them, it seems, enjoy a party. The nine-mile car ride to Monte Carlo, booked by Aston Martin, is rather surreal: sprawling sea views as we weave in and out of the tunnels built into the cliffside here in the South of France.
When I arrive on track, there’s no time to waste. Up first is a hot lap, the only chance we civilians get to experience the thrill of driving on the track. After hurriedly signing a waiver , I’m fitted with a helmet and ran through a safety briefing with a huddle of fellow early-risers.
No phones in the car — you don’t want it flying out of your hand and under the brake pedal of the driver you’re going 100 miles an hour with. We’re shepherded out onto the Monaco track and stationed at one of the last corners. An Aston Martin Vantage — sleek, sporty, its green and purple livery glistening in the morning sun — awaits, as does former F1 world champion Jenson Button, who I’m told is driving my hot lap.
When it’s my turn, I’m bundled into the car and quickly introduce myself to Button. He’s carved out a path post-F1 as a pundit for Sky, among other jobs, and also serves as a team ambassador for Aston Martin. Within seconds, his foot hits the floor. I lurch backward in the passenger seat as we climb to 120 miles an hour on turn one, one of the fastest straights on the iconically narrow track here in Monaco.
“It takes your breath away! ” I manage to squeal to Button . He navigates the steering and brakes with fighter-pilot precision, and I am reminded why he was once crowned the best driver in competitive motorsport.
“This must be like muscle memory,” I say as we slow to a halt — the lap is over in approximately two minutes and 10 seconds, though F1 cars travel this two-mile distance for about a minute faster per lap for 77 more laps on race day — and Button tells me he actually finds it easier in F1 machinery. I stumble out, still in disbelief of the physicality of it all, even as a passenger, and get a photo with him before he’s whisked into his next hot lap.
I’ve marched up the winding, steep roads of the municipality to collect my media accreditation from the Novotel, a badge that is nearly — bar the garage and other team motorhomes — an all-access pass to the Monaco paddock. By the time I’m back, the paddock has come alive. It’s the build-up to Free Practice 1, where F1 cars first make their appearance and get to grips with the weather, track conditions, and general temperament of the car.
From the harbor to the wall, which spans maybe eight or nine feet, the space is crammed with some of the most glamorous women I’ve ever seen, wealthy men already sweating through their linen shirts, and uniformed team members. , and Haas driver Esteban Ocon. I narrowly avoid spilling an iced matcha down the front of legendary Spanish driver Fernando Alonso while making my way out of Aston Martin’s motorhome.
This word does the structure a disservice — it’s something of a motor-mansion, decorated with brass-accented lamps, pots of fresh flowers and burning Diptyque candles . As the first practice session kicks off, I am hosted by Aston Martin in their Loges VIP suite, which gives select guests a view of the garages, pit lane, and track.
I am told, by the team’s technical presenter David Fabbro, that just one in 5,000 people here at the Grand Prix will have access to the suite. We are in the 0.02 percent. The Loges is one of five hospitality packages Aston Martin is operating across the weekend in Monaco, and it is an experience like no other: expensive champagne and fresh, hot food are served, my lunch backdrop by the roar of Lando Norris’ McLaren.
I pop in the complimentary Aston Martin-branded earbuds and can just about hear Fabbro’s commentary. When Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar sends his car into the wall near the swimming pool mid-way through the session, we learn that a new front wing will cost the team around £160,000 . Back at the motorhome, I sit down with Ella Justh, Aston Martin’s senior luxury experience manager.
She’s responsible for all of the trackside hospitality experiences and ensuring the brand delivers on its lavish promise for guests this weekend. Is it strange, I wonder, for her to be talking to a journalist fromat a major sporting event?
“I don’t find it weird at all,” responds Justh. “I think it’s really exciting that there’s a new kind of coverage taking place across Formula One weekends. ” Justh explains that celebrity interest in F1 is nothing new — it’s just intensifying.
“ the emergence of a new kind of celebrity, as well, the content creator-influencer group,” she says. “There’s a much broader group of people who have an interest in being here. ” It’s a real mix of guests they host, from C-suite executives to shareholders and friends of the team. Justh will curate culture-specific experiences for each Grand Prix on the calendar, which means a lot of oysters and bubbly here in Monaco.
At the Singapore Grand Prix, for example, she organized a team-up with a famous, Michelin-starred restaurant that serves traditional Singaporean cuisine.
“We can collaborate with the hottest chefs, hottest restaurants, the places that you’re dying to get a reservation at,” she beams. “I have such a passion for luxury experiences…I think my favorite part is that Aston Martin, as a brand, is continuously evolving. Yes, it has this baseline heritage, iconic luxury standard, but it’s always open to fresh ideas and new perspectives, especially as we grow all of our areas and we invest in new hospitality spaces.
”After Free Practice 2 wraps up and a glass of Barons de Rothschild champagne at the Aston motorhome, it’s time to head back to the Pop-Up Hotel. Their tender service is operated by a company called Slick Travel. They’re regimented with harbor pick-up and drop-off, and it’s a beautiful, blustery 20-minute journey back to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Along the way, we speed past Bill Gates’ $645 million hydrogen-powered yacht Breakthrough and the towering, 72-metre Silver Fox, chartered by Alo for the weekend.
The Alo yacht’s high-profile guests here for the Grand Prix include social media stars Alix Earle, Jake Shane, Anastasia Karanikolaou, and Stella Jones. After pastries and fresh fruit at the Pop-Up’s dockside restaurant, the tender takes us straight to the paddock where we’re soon boarding an Aston Martin tender to the team yacht.
There are around $4 billion’s worth of yachts anchored in Port Hercule over the Grand Prix weekend, including Faith, owned by Aston Martin’s billionaire Canadian chairman Lawrence Stroll. We slip our shoes off and board the yacht just opposite Faith. It is four tiers tall, including a spa called The Sanctuary on sea level, sponsored by Aston Martin brand partner Elemis. If you listen closely, you can hear the celebratory uncorking of Dom Pérignon bottles on next door’s vessel.
After an iced latte, I sit down with Eric Ernst, a Swiss tech guru who currently works at Aston Martin as their commercial technology ambassador. The conversation is routinely interrupted by uniformed staff offering us a selection of canapés. Ernst, dressed head-to-toe in AM’s signature racing green, is discussing what might one day be possible in F1 with artificial intelligence.
“Ten years ago, it was all about sustainability,” he says. “Now it’s all about AI. ”,” continues Ernst.
“I think there is a time where we’re gonna have a large language model on a car, yeah, but in a way that is an R2-D2 that talks to Luke Skywalker. ” The sport will never surrender the necessity for a human driver, he says, but maybe one day AI would serve as an agent on the car that works with the engineers in the garage to “understand how the driver wants to be interacted with.
” Ernst says: “What’s exciting for me from an entertainment view is suddenly we’re introducing 22 new voices into a broadcast” — a bot for each driver — “the car has a personality, you give a voice. ” He even suggests, withShortly after the interview with Ernst, I’m introduced to Kate Smithson, Aston Martin’s chief of partnerships.
“We have about 30-35 partners in total,” she explains, Boss, Xerox, TikTok and Oakley among them. “And what my team is doing is helping those brands to build out their activation plan to ensure they get a return on their investment, that they stay with the team long term.
The profile of teams has changed a lot now,” she adds, “and certainly for teams like us, maybe 70-80 percent of the team’s income comes from the partnership portfolio, so they really are at the heart of everything that we do financially. ” It’s a glimpse into the sport’s rapidly expanding commercial side.
Here in Monaco, as A-listers including Cynthia Erivo, Noah Schnapp, Olivia Wilde, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas make their pit lane appearances just across the harbor, F1 is no longer just a competition — it’s a lifestyle.
“When Liberty took over F1, they recognized that there weren’t new fans coming in,” says Smithson. “They built a strategy to challenge that — part of which was, and I think that it was an amazing case study of what the media can do. It really brought alive the people side of the sport, especially for the women under 35 demographic.
I’ve got children and until probably five years ago, I don’t think they ever once asked me anything about what I do. Now? All their friends love it. ”A divine lunch at the Aston Martin motorhome includes steamed green asparagus, pistachios and soft herbs with 36-month-aged Parmesan gnocchi, peas, summer turnip and garlic velouté.
My lunch-mates opt for the Gillardeau oysters and sashimi mix. When in Monaco.
First Kim Kardashian sighting. From Aston Martin’s Loges suite, I can see the reality mogul and Skims founder on the Ferrari garage balcony. She’s here to support seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton and has caused quite the ruckus in doing so.
“I’ve seenof security guards. I’ve just been pushed out of the way — it’s been super strict all weekend,” Aston’s reserve driver, American Jak Crawford, tells, but the conversation swiftly moves to Kardashian. Let’s just say I’ve overheard a lot of “Have you seen her? ” so far.
After a tense qualifying session puts 19-year-old Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli on pole position for Sunday’s race, the pit lane quietens enough for me to wander over and scour the team garages. Most of the drivers may have headed off for some much-needed rest before race day, but the engineers will work on these cars until late into the night.
Suddenly, I find myself stationed with two Getty photographers — old school paparazzi types, skin tan from hours spent perched with a camera in the sun — waiting at the Ferrari garage. They’ve had a tip-off that Hamilton and Kardashian haven’t left yet. The only exit from the garage is right in front of us. It’s the shot that every single photographer in Monaco wants.
A rival pap of theirs, a Frenchman, comes our way.
“She’s gone,” they tell him, to throw him off the scent — it works, and he leaves. Half an hour has passed before the younger of the two photographers gets a call. Kim Kardashian left on a boat two hours ago.
An early morning tender drops me at the Aston motorhome for breakfast , before I’m taken back on board the team yacht, where their prized driver, Alonso, is talking about what the Monaco Grand Prix means to the drivers.
“All the drivers want to win in Monaco once in their life, and I’ve been lucky enough to win it two times,” he says. He is holding an Aston Martin rubber duck, which has its own helmet. In fact, a whole pool of them sits in the middle of the boat. Each one is wearing an Aston race suit.
A last-minute pit lane walk delivers on the star power. I walk past McDreamy himself, Patrick Dempsey, who has long been a fan of motorsport, Cadillac partner Terry Crews in a brilliant Hawaiian shirt, and later I’m told some screamingfans were cloying to get a selfie with Joshua Heuston, who is here with Tag Heuer — F1’s mega-sponsor and “official timekeeper. ” I miss Kim and Khloe Kardashian, who are on the other side of the garages, on the grid.
The Côte d’Azur sun is sweltering, though you wouldn’t be able to tell judging by some of the fashion choices here. One woman, who is one of hundreds of content creators I’ve seen vlogging their experience at the Grand Prix, is wearing a white, leather helmet with Mickey Mouse ears attached. Another has a dress embroidered with Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari on it — she is stopped frequently by attendees wanting to get a picture.
The drivers themselves wrestle their way through the crowds and fend off swarms of iPhone-wielding fans to convene with their race teams ahead of the Grand Prix. The road beneath our feet sizzles in the sun. Before the red lights go out, we are again treated to a hot lunch in Aston’s Loges suite. Today, I go for green beans and truffle risotto.
A waiter with a caviar board slung around his neck tours the room. It’s race day, so the champagne continues to flow. And by the time the drivers are speeding around the track, it’s clear Antonelli is running away with the coveted win. He is the youngest-ever winner in Monaco, and luckily the race is still wildly entertaining: Max Verstappen doesn’t even get past the starting grid and Monegasque hero Leclerc crashes out toward the final few laps.
At this, the paddock gasps in unison. A frantic journey back to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat in a bid to miss the Monaco-to-Nice-Airport traffic. I leave behind the ensuing afterparties, which will leave the municipality covered in a layer of confetti and expensive alcohol come tomorrow morning. The hottest ticket?
According to the folk I talked to, it’s the Amber Lounge, which has hosted the legendary Grand Prix afterparty since 2004. If you can somehow nab a ticket, it’ll set you back around €800 . For a table, you’re looking at €15,000-€20,000 . For those able to come to Monte Carlo on this weekend every year, it’s pocket change.
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