Monaco Grand Prix - A New Bucket-List Driving Tour

From a supercar joyride down the drowsy, sun-splashed roads of Provence to the high-octane, champagne-fuelled mayhem of the Monaco Grand Prix, a new bucket-list driving tour kicks into high gear.

- Nicole Trilivas

It's the kind of flawless, dazzlingly bright day the French Riviera is famous for: sunrays seep through the Mediterranean making it glow like Murano glass, and palm trees - swishy and supermodel tall - dapple the Beaux-Arts boulevards in veils of shade. Celebritystudded superyachts clog Port Hercules, bouncing off each other like bath toys, and the traffic along the corniche above Monte Carlo sulks to a crawl.

It's the Grand Prix, shrugs my taxi driver, in that oh so-French, what-did-you-expect way. He's right, of course; but it's not just any Grand Prix. Fuelled by a new wave of fandom by virtue of Netflix's Formula 1: Drive to Survive documentary, plus a post-pandemic roaring 2020s attitude, the May 2022 Formula 1 Grand Prix event reached full fever pitch among the beau monde. Everyone - from movie stars to moguls, princes of finance to real-life princes - wanted in on the action.

In the history of the iconic Monaco Grand Prix, which dates back to the 1920s - and is as much about what happens on the track as what happens off it - there have never been more applications for yacht berths. I'm told that over 175 yachts didn't make the cut this year, including (allegedly) exF1 and Ferrari driver Kimi Räikkönen's.

One that did make the cut? My destination: MV Friendship, a pearly-white, 173ft Oceano superyacht, docked off Quai Rainier III and chartered by Ultimate Driving Tours. With 15 years of experience crafting luxe driving holidays and motorsport experiences all over the world, it's safe to say that Ultimate Driving Tours knows its stuff, so of course, it was going to conjure up a yacht, regardless of this year's challenges (which are too lengthy to get into here, and may or may not involve an Eastern European billionaire, an impounded vessel; and a last-minute change-of-plans from the Prince of Monaco himself).