Croupier.com – Best Online Casino UK Gambling Resource. Online casino gambling croupier reviews best online casino UK, best online casino games. Gambling strategy, free casino bonus, tournaments and tips to win!

Grand Prix races may come and go, but Monaco’s came and stayed. Some have likened driving there to “riding a bicycle in your living room.” Time magazine once called it “a cheerful interlude” in “a sport that is obsessed with speed and dogged with death.”

In 2009, Autosport Magazine’s survey of British sports fans rated the Monaco Formula One circuit as the greatest of the “Seven Sporting Wonders of the World.” That year, Jenson Button won in a Brawn Mercedes, succeeding 2008 winner Lewis Hamilton, who triumphed in a McLaren Mercedes. Coincidentally, both are British.

The 3.34-km course through Monte Carlo and the neighboring district of La Condamine is not much different today from the one Anthony Noghés laid out more than 80 years ago. For example, the 90-degree right-hand bend at Sainte Devote that starts each lap still requires passage in first or second gear, as does the final sharp right known as Virage Anthony Noghés.

Between the two turns, drivers must negotiate more than a dozen challenges. They can take the rising Ascent Beau-Rivage in highest gear, brake for long lefts at Massenet and Casino Square, speed up Avenue Albert Ier, and then make a tight right at Virage Mirabeau before hitting the Fairmont Hairpin, previously known as the Station Hairpin and Loews Hairpin after former owners of the facing hotel. No passing is possible in the narrow hairpin, which leads to a downhill slope into the double right turns of Virage du Portier ahead of the tunnel.

Read More >> The Once and Future Grand Prix of Monaco

Aryton Senna won the Monaco Grand Prix six times between 1987 and 1993, losing only once—to Alain Prost—in 1988. His string of five consecutive victories is unmatched. The Brazilian had been driving since he was ten years old, when his father gave him a full-size 100cc kart as a birthday gift.

At the age of 17, Senna won the South American Kart Championship. He finished sixth at Europe’s 1977 World Karting Championships at Le Mans, and then came in second in both 1979 and 1980 before making the leap to Formula Ford 1600, the Formula Three, and finally the Grand Prix of Monaco. He was just 24 years old.

When he got his first Monaco win in 1987, Senna drove for Lotus Camel Honda, but he jumped at the opportunity to team up with his rival Prost in 1988 when Marlboro McLaren Tag offered him one of their cars. Together the two dominated the streets of Monte Carlo, with Prost breaking the 140 kph barrier in 1989, Senna topping him at 141 kph in 1990, and Prost grabbing the lap record back at 142.006 kph after moving his allegiance to Ferrari in 1991.

Read More >> Monaco with a Capital “S”

The switch to 3.0-litre engines, beginning with the Monaco Grand Prix in 1967, helped Britain’s Piers Courage crack the 130 kph/lap barrier in 1969 and propelled Austrian Andreas Nikolaus “Niki” Lauda to back-to-back victories in 1975-76. Other winner big winners of the 1970s included “Super Swede” Ronnie Peterson in 1974 and South Africa’s Jody David Scheckter in 1977 and 1979, the year he finished the Grand Prix tour as the F1 Drivers World Champion.

From 1968 to 1972, the Monaco Grand Prix ran an 80-lap event, before switching to the 78 laps used currently. Another big change in the early 1970s was the addition of tobacco advertising to vehicle bodies, as cigarette manufacturers joined oil companies and car makers as the primary sponsors of Grand Prix racing. The 1972 race in Monaco was won by Jean-Pierre Beltoise in a Marlboro BRM, while 1973’s fastest lap was run by Brazil’s Emerson Fittipaldi at 133.947 kph in a John Player Special Lotus.

By the 1980s, the “old” names in Grand Prix driving were the “new” names of constructors, such as Brabham and McLaren. Although Jack Brabham retired from F1 racing in 1970, he continued to build engines and one of them powered Ricardo Patrese to victory in Monaco in 1982. Similarly, Bruce McLaren’s partnership with Marlboro and Porsche paid off with a winner in the tiny sovereign nation two years later, but it did not come without controversy.

Read More >> Monaco Grand Prix – An Era of New Stars

Racing was suspended in Monaco for nearly a decade, beginning in 1938 and ending in 1947. One notable exception was on 5 August, 1945. As the war was winding down and the Japanese were about to surrender, members of the 36th American Infantry Division held a little “Grand Prix” of their own on the streets of Monte Carlo—a regularity trial using jeeps and GMC lorries.

From 1924 to 1937, some 19 to 37 Grand Prix races for open-wheeled vehicles had been conducted in Europe every year, including major events as well as lesser club races. These were held under rules put forth by the FIA, a set of regulations known as “Formula Libre.” This formula designated car weights, engine sizes, fuels that could be used, and even the number of mechanics allowed trackside.

One concern often expressed over the years was that “Today’s racing cars are too fast and too dangerous.” The FIA was constantly under pressure to increase the safety and curb the speed of Grand Prix cars. But fans wanted more speed and more power, and drivers and manufacturers wanted more freedom and more control. The rules under which the last pre-war Monaco Grand Prix were conducted differed significantly from those that applied in 1929.

For example, minimum car weights were reduced from 900 kg to 750 kg, monoposto (single seat) bodies were allowed instead of the original two-seater requirement, and body widths shrank from a minimum 100 cm to 85 cm. Over time, manufacturers were given a free choice of fuels and engine capacities up to 3.0 litres were allowed for supercharged models or 4.5 litres for those without compressors. The minimum length of Grand Prix events was also shortened by 100 km.

Read More >> Monaco – A New Formula for Racing

The initial success of the Monaco Grand Prix was followed up in 1930 with the race’s second running, won again in a Bugatti T35B, but this time piloted by France’s René Dreyfus. He set new lap and race speed records in doing so at 90.141 kph and 86.137 kph, respectively.

By way of comparison, the 1930 Indianapolis 500 was won by America’s Billy Arnold in a Miller-Hartz Special at an average speed of 161.6 kph. If films of the two races were shown side by side, it might have appeared that the cars in Monte Carlo were standing still. But it was always clear to the organisers that the Monaco Grand Prix would not be a speed race. It would focus instead upon racing skill.

The Indianapolis “brickyard” was designed as an oval track with banked turns, made specifically for fast driving. From the very start, Monte Carlo’s circuit featured short straight-aways, S-curves, and several turns angled at greater than 90 degrees. Speed here could kill. What’s more, Monaco had a component that no other Grand Prix circuit featured: The Tunnel.

Driving into and out of a dark tunnel at high speeds presents drivers with a special set of challenges. The contrast of light and dark upon entering and exiting forces drivers to adjust their vision. The cars are in a low gear as they come out the sharp turn known as the Virage du Portier and approach the tunnel. Acceleration through the darkness brings the vehicles to the fastest point of the track, and then the drivers must brake for a chicane soon after reaching daylight.

A single pass through the tunnel would be difficult enough, but the full course is comprised of 78 laps. To maintain an average speed of 90 kph or more requires absolute concentration and the use of all six gears as well as headlamps. There is no other Grand Prix circuit like it.

Read More >> Making History at Monte Carlo