28/05/2002

Allan McNish reflects on Monaco

Monte Carlo is one of those places that you dream about racing at when you are a small boy. It's a special place. From purely a racing point of view it can be frustrating but Monte Carlo is Monte Carlo.

I have an apartment in Fontveille now so I had obviously been around the circuit many times in a road car but that's just not quite the same.

You hear the same advice about Monaco time and time again: keep the car off the wall! It's important advice too because it is the kind of place where initially at least there is more time to be had from the driver than the car. You need to establish a rhythm and if you have interruptions and accidents then you can find yourself really struggling.

That's why I was so pleased with Thursday the first day when I finished up second quickest and did almost 50 laps without any major problems.

I got plenty of attention from the media after ending up second and getting back to the paddock through the sea of people wasn't exactly easy.

Second fastest time was very nice but it wasn't really representative because although we hadn't done anything to the set-up throughout Thursday we did try the car in low fuel trim on fresh tyres near the end. I could actually have gone quicker if it hadn't started to spit with rain when I put the new Michelins on.

But Bernie Ecclestone seemed quite chuffed for me and actually put an arm around me after I'd finished doing a TV interview. He asked if I'd been drunk out there! "No " I joked back "I had a stuck throttle and no brakes!!"

The really important thing was to get the job done in qualifying too which is absolutely critical at Monaco because overtaking is almost impossible. I had a bit of a scare on Saturday morning when someone came out of the pits just as I headed into the first corner Sainte-Devote. I had to stay wide which caused me a problem because many of the experienced guys said that the bumps on the outside line were worse than they have ever been. My front wheels came right off the ground and there was no way I could make the corner. Happily I survived a quick trip down the escape road without any damage.

I was very satisfied to get the car into the top 10 in qualifying at a place where I was a newcomer and everyone says that experience counts for so much. Mika was ninth just 0.06s quicker than me and that was really a first rate job by the team. On Saturday night we were confident that we could score points.

What can I say about the race? It wasn't very long! Not as short as a couple have been this year but very very disappointing. We had survived the first lap sort-out and I was comfortable right behind Mika in ninth place. We'd already picked up a place at the start and so things were looking good. Then I just tagged the inside barrier going into Sainte-Devote after 15 laps. The next thing I knew I was in the tyres on the other side of the road.

To say I was annoyed doesn't really make a start on it. Everyone knows Monaco can bite and I understood how Ayrton Senna felt when he went off when leading in 1988 and walked straight back to his apartment! I at least managed to drag myself back to the pits where I watched the rest of the race on the monitors.

I went to the gala dinner at the Monte Carlo Sporting Club after the race and had as good an evening as possible in the circumstances. I was sat next to former F1 driver Andrea de Cesaris and enjoyed listening to a few good stories from him. But I couldn't help thinking about Sainte-Devote a few times! Never mind though I've put it behind me now and I'm going to get stuck right in again at Montreal in a fortnight's time.