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The exit of Mirabeau leads to the short, steeply downhill dash to the famous Lowes hairpin. Well, it was Lowes during my time of racing at Monaco. Originally it was 'the old station hairpin' but, depending on the nom du jour of the hotel standing adjacent the hairpin, it has been given several prefixes over the years. I think it's the Grand hotel right now. Whatever, I still think of it as Lowes.

Lowes is the tightest corner that F1 cars are asked to negotiate. Not just here at Monaco but at every track on the F1 schedule. The hairpin is beyond ridiculously tight. How ridiculously tight? So tight, in fact, that the teams must manufacture front suspension components especially for this one corner. The driver needs to apply such an extreme degree of steering angle to get the car around the apex that both the track-rods and top wishbones must be redesigned and remade in order to prevent the inner face of the wheel rim machining its way through the suspension.

Should you be in Monaco for the race weekend (and fortunate enough not to be working in the pits) then you really ought to walk up to Lowes on Saturday night. On the evening before the grand prix they have an amazing gathering of Ferrari road cars parked in front of the hotel. Not run-of-the-mill entry level cars (he says, blithely…) no, I'm talking serious stuff: 288 GTOs, F40s, Enzos, et al. The beautiful people gather there too. Many of the girls, wrapped in elegant figure-hugging dresses look as splendid as the cars they pretend not to be admiring.

Sorry, I digress. So, from Lowes we continue downhill, right, towards Portier, right again, blasting into the relative dimness of the tunnel, before bursting into the bright sunlight again at 175mph, hitting the brakes hard on the run down to the Nouvelle Chicane. It is very easy to out brake yourself here; tempting to stay on the throttle and off the brakes and the downshift paddle just a fraction longer in an attempt to overtake the competition.

Realistically, it's about the only place on the track where you can overtake too, soooo… you pays your money and you takes your chances. The driver who pulls off the manoeuvre successfully looks like a hero. The driver who locks-up and overshoots the chicane looks like a chump. And the difference twixt totally cool hero and total chump is probably no greater than a quarter of a second's worth of mal judgement.

The car suffers more understeer as the driver throws the steering left at Tabac, and the gearbox is thoroughly punished on the dash around the pool, the Piscine, and on to Rascasse. Monaco provides a real test of gearbox reliability. Last year the transmission of the R26 Renault was subjected to fifty-seven gear shifts around a lap of the track, equating to 4446 throughout the duration of the race. During the first four races of 2007 we have seen several cars sidelined with gearbox related problems; I can't but think we're going to see ever more transmission problems over the three days of practice, qualifying and the Monaco grand prix itself.

Using second gear, the car all but chugs around the awkwardly sharp Rascasse; the car's traction isn't helped any by the sloping camber of the road. A tiny uphill dash past the pit entrance leads to the final corner, Anthony Noghes, another severe right-hander that brings the car back to the start-finish straight. This being Monaco, however, the straight is, predictably enough, not even remotely straight.

As the driver powers out of this last corner the car will lose traction, they all do. The car will slide to the left, they all do that too. Typically all four tyres will give up at some point and the car will drift to within a few millimetres of hitting the Armco but, to achieve a respectable time, you must leave the throttle wide open. You lift, you lose. The trick (so drivers tell me…) is to be pinpoint accurate and to have complete faith that the car will not hit the barrier, to keep the throttle pressed and know, just know that the car will correct itself. Of course, sometimes this mystic sixth sense deal doesn't seem to work too well and the car simply slams into the Armco, ripping two corners off and resulting in yet another all-nighter for the mechanics. But, you know, that's drivers for you.

As I said a little earlier: you go into the Monaco weekend expecting it to be a total pain and it never fails to live up to that expectation. But… But, come Sunday afternoon, if it's your team that's drinking the victory champagne, well, the whole weekend has been worth every second of your time and trouble. Monaco is unique.