Monaco Grand Prix - A New Bucket-List Driving Tour

From a supercar joyride down the drowsy, sun-splashed roads of Provence to the high-octane, champagne-fuelled mayhem of the Monaco Grand Prix, a new bucket-list driving tour kicks into high gear.

- Nicole Trilivas

It's the kind of flawless, dazzlingly bright day the French Riviera is famous for: sunrays seep through the Mediterranean making it glow like Murano glass, and palm trees - swishy and supermodel tall - dapple the Beaux-Arts boulevards in veils of shade. Celebritystudded superyachts clog Port Hercules, bouncing off each other like bath toys, and the traffic along the corniche above Monte Carlo sulks to a crawl.

It's the Grand Prix, shrugs my taxi driver, in that oh so-French, what-did-you-expect way. He's right, of course; but it's not just any Grand Prix. Fuelled by a new wave of fandom by virtue of Netflix's Formula 1: Drive to Survive documentary, plus a post-pandemic roaring 2020s attitude, the May 2022 Formula 1 Grand Prix event reached full fever pitch among the beau monde. Everyone - from movie stars to moguls, princes of finance to real-life princes - wanted in on the action.

In the history of the iconic Monaco Grand Prix, which dates back to the 1920s - and is as much about what happens on the track as what happens off it - there have never been more applications for yacht berths. I'm told that over 175 yachts didn't make the cut this year, including (allegedly) exF1 and Ferrari driver Kimi Räikkönen's.