The Club And The Grid

Monaco has long been called the world's most exclusive club, and The Monegasque™ its house magazine. So why are the fastest men on earth queuing to write for it?

THERE IS A line one hears, sooner or later, at every dinner table between the Place du Casino and the Yacht Club terrace. Monaco, the saying goes, is not really a country at all. It is a club. Its membership is small, its dues are steep, and its rules, though rarely written down, are understood by everyone who belongs. You do not apply. You are, in a manner of speaking, recognized.

If Monaco is the club, then The Monegasque™ has come to be seen as its house magazine. The comparison is meant as a compliment and occasionally as a gentle reproach. The masthead carries three royal editors and one of the great names of Swiss watchmaking. The sovereign himself has written for its pages. Its advertisers build nine-figure yachts and long-range private jets. To the casual observer, this is a publication made by insiders, for insiders, and it does not apologize for that.

And yet the club has a habit of surprising those who think they know its rules. The most telling evidence of what The Monegasque™ has become is not found in the drawing rooms at all. It is found in the paddock.

Three drivers on the current Formula 1 grid count themselves among the magazine's contributing writers. Valtteri Bottas, a ten-time Grand Prix winner from his years at Mercedes, has returned to the grid this season to help launch Cadillac, the sport's newest team. Oscar Piastri, of McLaren, spent much of last season leading the World Championship. Gabriel Bortoleto, the young Brazilian who arrived in Formula 1 as Formula 2 champion, is now carrying Audi's colours in its first season as a works team. Between them they represent the sport's past, present and future, and all three have chosen to put their names to its pages.

That is not a small thing. A Formula 1 driver's time is among the most rigorously managed commodities in modern sport. Every hour away from the simulator, the gym or the factory is negotiated by teams, sponsors and managers who guard the driver's image with the vigilance of a royal household. Contributions to magazines are rare, and when they happen they are usually ghostwritten fragments in a sponsor's in-flight publication. For three active drivers to write for an independent Monaco title, of their own accord, says something about the company they believe they are keeping.

They are far from alone. Beyond the current grid, The Monegasque™ has drawn some of the most accomplished names in international motorsport. Bruno Senna, who carried the most hallowed surname in racing into Formula 1 with Renault and Williams before building a distinguished career in endurance racing, has written for the magazine. So has Lucas di Grassi, a Formula E champion and one of the sport's most articulate voices on technology and sustainability. Sébastien Buemi, the former Formula 1 driver who went on to win Formula E and the 24 Hours of Le Mans several times over, is another. Maro Engel, the Mercedes-AMG GT driver and multiple winner of the FIA GT World Cup on the streets of Macau, has added his voice, and the list continues to grow.

Read together, these bylines amount to something no other luxury magazine can quite claim: a paddock of its own. Drivers for whom Monaco is a home, a workplace or simply the jewel of the calendar have found in The Monegasque™ a publication that speaks their language without speaking down to them.

Why would they? The answer lies in a misunderstanding about what kind of club Monaco really is. From the outside, the Principality looks like a fortress of inherited money, and a magazine that reflects it might be expected to be the same: a register of the comfortable, written for the already arrived. But Monaco's oldest loyalties have never been to wealth alone. They have been to excellence. This is the country that gave the world the Monaco Grand Prix, that measures its pride in Olympic bobsleighs and world records, whose sovereign competed at five consecutive Winter Games. The club, properly understood, has always admitted members on merit.

Racing drivers understand that better than anyone. No inheritance can buy a pole position. No family name, however hallowed, can carry a driver through Sainte-Dévote at full commitment; Bruno Senna would be the first to say so. The paddock is perhaps the purest meritocracy left in public life, and those who have earned their place in it recognize the same standard when they see it elsewhere. A magazine that refuses imitation luxury, that insists its contributors be the genuine article, is a magazine that racing drivers instinctively trust.

There is a practical logic, too. The drivers who write for The Monegasque™ appear in its pages beside princes, jewellers, artists and the builders of the world's finest yachts. For a young driver like Bortoleto, that is a stage no press release can provide. For veterans like Bottas or Buemi, it is a chance to be read as something more than a lap time: as thinkers, travellers and men of taste. The club gains speed; the drivers gain a voice. Both sides of the bargain come away richer.

So yes, The Monegasque™ may well be the magazine of the club. But the club, it turns out, is not quite what its critics imagine. Its doors open not to those who can afford the dues, but to those who have earned the right to walk through them. On any given weekend, some of its most valued members are strapped into a cockpit, a few centimetres off the ground, travelling at more than three hundred kilometres an hour. On Monday, a few of them sit down to write for us.