Circuit de Monaco

Monaco is the shortest lap on the calendar and the only one where the walls are the track limits. Run on closed public roads through Monte Carlo since 1929, it asks for a driving style found nowhere else: minimum-radius lines, constant steering correction, and the confidence to place a car within centimetres of Armco for two hours.

Overtaking is close to impossible, which makes Saturday the decisive day. Pole position here is worth more than at any other circuit, and qualifying laps at Monaco are routinely cited as the hardest in the sport. The lap runs uphill from Sainte-Dévote through Massenet and Casino Square, drops through Mirabeau to the Grand Hotel Hairpin — the slowest corner in Formula 1, taken at around 45 km/h — then plunges through the tunnel, where drivers pass from bright daylight to shadow at over 280 km/h.

Because average speeds are so low, Monaco is the one race granted an exception to the sport's 305 km minimum distance. Teams run maximum downforce, the softest tyre compounds available, and a car set up softer than anywhere else to ride the bumps and kerbs.