Circuit De Monaco, Principality of Monaco
29 May,2022
The principality of Monaco, more commonly known as simply "Monaco", has been home to one of the most prestigious Grand Prix in all of the Formula One seasons since the latter's inception all the way back in 1950. The first Monaco GP however was held even further back in 1929, an invitation-only event.
Since then, the race has been held every year, becoming part of the furniture in the proverbial F1 household.
Monaco itself is quite a unique place, popular for being one of, if not the most expensive places in the world. The smallest sovereign state, after Vatican City is home to four casinos, the oldest being Monte Carlo Casino which was opened in the late 19th century. Despite not being a part of the EU(or France), thanks to its relations with France, Monaco uses the Euro as it's official currency.
A scarcely believable 30% of Monaco residents are millionaires.
Monaco is famous (or rather, infamous) for being a tax haven, for it has simply no personal taxes and very low business taxes. Unfortunately, this has led to it being a haven for money laundering as well. This has led to Monaco being placed under review by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), with the threat of entering the "grey list", along with the likes of South Sudan, UAE and Syria.
The principality is also home to the AS Monaco football team, which plys it's trade in the French Ligue 1 and have been, very ironically, French Champions on multiple occasions. They also enjoyed a fairytale run to the Champions League Semi Finals
in the 2016-17 season, led by Radamel Falcao and a very young Kylian Mbappè.
Ethan Hudson, however, didn't care for football, he cared for racing. A lottery win had meant free tickets to the latest edition of the Monaco GP, and he hadn't needed to think twice before booking flights and getting to the Circuit right on raceday.
Being short-sighted as always, he'd forgotten to get an umbrella, or a raincoat and now stood patiently sharing a Williams' fan's umbrella, cursing the weather. The rain had meant an indefinite delay to the race start procedure, which baffled spectators.
"Use the Wets, you c***s!!", screamed the Williams' fan, as the rain worsened and showed no signs of abating anytime soon.
Ethan sighed and pulled out his phone to watch the qualification highlights and kill time.
He watched as Charles Leclerc took pole again and Carlos Sainz made it a Ferrari one-two, followed by the RedBulls of Perez and Verstappen in third and fourth respectively.
After 15 minutes, Ethan breathed a sigh of relief as the cars came out on track, in the rain, under the safety car, and started formation laps. The rain gods, seemingly infuriated at being disobeyed, started lashing back furiously. Two laps and another round of expletives from the Williams' fan later, the cars were back in the pits, much to Ethan's frustration.
"Typical Monaco, innit?" grinned the Williams'fan. Ethan forced a nod back at him, resisting the urge to rip out his hair on the spot.
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The race finally began after a delay of 65 minutes due to rain and various other system problems, albeit with a rolling start.
A narrow circuit coupled with rain meant that there were no overtakes possible, save those from Pierre Gasly, who seemed to be on a one-man mission to make the race watchable.
"Look at him go!", said Ethan gleefully to the Williams' fan, as Gasly passed Albon, who was driving a Williams. The fan simply shrugged.
A few laps later
Ethan Hudson was enjoying life. He was at his dream GP race. He'd wanted to be here ever since he first watched F1 as a teenager. Most of his other racing friends had been more into NASCAR and he'd always felt left out in his love for F1.
Now though, with his favourite team leading with both their drivers one and two, with the first few nervous laps in the rain finished, he felt he could truly relax and enjoy the beauty of Monaco, beyond trackside views.
Suddenly, his phone vibrated. It was a notification of someone pitting.
Adjusting his binoculars, he saw that it was the Ferrari of Leclerc, switching to Inters. Sighing at the relatively routine stop, Ethan went back to daydreaming.
He'd just sat back and put his hands in his pockets, when he felt something on his fingers. A ring!
Cursing again, he drew his hand out with the ring and almost had a mini panic attack. It was the ring he was going to give Jennifer and he'd vowed to keep it safe.
Ethan had had a long history of losing track of things important to him. In childhood, he'd somehow managed to lose his brand new mobile phone at school, followed by routinely losing keys to his house and car. He'd almost lost his first paycheck while crossing the road one fine evening, where he'd been thinking that nothing could ever go wrong with his life. That memory still made him cringe whenever he thought about it.
So, now evidently deciding that his pocket wasn't the safest of places at a crowded event, he kept the ring inside the cover of his phone and held on to the phone for dear life.
Just as he was mentally reprimanding himself for such a juvenile error, he felt his phone vibrate furiously multiple times.
"Drama at Ferrari" read the header.
"Oh,not again!" he screamed as he watched the replay on his phone, having already missed the trackside action.
"In in in,... No stay out, stay out, stay out!!"
"No no no, what the f**k are you doing?!!", screamed Leclerc at his race engineer, much in the same way Ethan was screaming trackside. Ferrari had mistakenly pitted Leclerc right after Sainz, leading to a massive delay in his changing of tyres. Leclerc went from first to fourth,courtesy of pitting two times in 4 laps, gifting the race lead to Perez in the process.
Ethan resigned himself to another Ferrari defeat as he held his head in his hands with utter frustration, cursing his luck and wondering why these things always happen to him.
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Sergio Perez, started in the top 6 at Monaco for the first time ever, he's led a race at Monaco, for the first time. He suffered disappointment at Barcelona last time out and has rebounded in some style! It's Perez in the Principality, to win the Monaco Grand Prix for his third win in Formula One! Carlos Sainz once again, has to settle for a runners-up spot behind RedBull with Max---
Ethan turned off the TV. He'd been too pissed after the pitstop incident, and he'd left the track after Mick Schumacher had crashed out and brought a race restart.
His dream weekend had turned into a Spectacular Sunday nightmare. He was now simply looking forward to go back home the next day and putting this all behind him.
-----
Ethan Hudson wasn't the only early returnee from the race.
The Williams'fan had had an excellent time too. He'd successfully managed to swap rings like he'd been instructed to do and now was back at his hotel, waiting for his bounty. His master would be pleased.
"The job is done", he typed into a pager.
"Very good, come outside your room, alone and reach the end of the lobby. Wait near the elevators.", came the instant response.
The pickpocket went where he'd been told to, whistling merrily. He was just turning left towards the elevators when he felt a huge blow to the back of his head.
Everything blacked out.
YOU ARE READING
TIME WARS
Детектив / ТриллерThe discovery of a time machine by two physicists leads to an apocalyptic race to control the course of time and the world as we know it, once and for all. I'll be working out an uploading schedule if anyone wants to read my stories.
