Circuit de Monaco

The track at a glance

The Circuit de Monaco is a temporary street circuit laid over the public roads of Monte Carlo and La Condamine. Its six-week build turns harbour boulevards, a hotel underpass and the square in front of the casino into a 3.337 km lap with 19 numbered turns, 44 metres of elevation change and almost no run-off. It has hosted a Grand Prix since 1929, was on the first World Championship calendar in 1950, and has a contract to stay on it until 2035.

It is the shortest lap on the modern calendar, so a race runs to 78 laps rather than the usual 300 km. Average speeds are the lowest of the season, yet the margin for error is the smallest: the barriers sit right at the edge of a track that is, in places, barely wider than two cars.

That combination is what makes it such a good layout to study and to remaster. Every quality a modern circuit designer is told to avoid is here — narrow straights, blind crests, a 180° hairpin, a single braking zone where passing is realistic — and it still produces one of the most demanding laps in the sport.

A lap of Monaco, corner by corner

The numbers below follow the 15 named corners in the remastered layout. The official 19-turn count splits a few of these into their component kinks and chicane halves.

1. Sainte Dévote

   A tight, uphill right-hander at the end of the start straight, named after the chapel just behind the barrier. Twenty cars arriving at once on lap one make it the scene of more first-lap incidents than anywhere else on the lap.

2. Beau Rivage

   Not really a corner but a long, curving climb up the Avenue d'Ostende at gradients of up to 12%. Cars are flat out and squeezed by the walls on both sides.

3. Massenet

   A long, blind left-hander over the brow of the hill. The car is loaded up for several seconds with the outside wall waiting at the exit, and the line carries straight into the next corner.

4. Casino

   A quick right into Casino Square, taken with the car still settling from Massenet. The road dips and bumps across the square on the way out.

5. Mirabeau

   After a short, downhill straight past the casino gardens comes a heavy braking zone into a tight right-hander. It is one of the few places where a brave move can stick.

6. Hairpin

   The slowest corner in Grand Prix racing, taken at roughly 50 km/h with full steering lock. The corner's name has changed with the hotel above it — Station, Loews, Grand Hotel and now Fairmont — but the geometry hasn't.

7. Mirabeau Bas

   A short, downhill right that drops the track towards the sea.

8. Portier

   A 90° right onto the seafront. The exit matters more than the entry because it leads onto the longest flat-out section of the lap.

9. Tunnel

   A long right-hand curve under the hotel, taken flat out at close to the car's top speed. Drivers go from bright sunlight into the dark and back again, onto a downhill braking zone.

10. Nouvelle Chicane

    A tight left-right at the tunnel exit, slowed into its current two-90° shape in 1986. It is the main overtaking spot of the lap and the hardest braking zone.

11. Tabac

    A fast left along the harbour, named after a tobacconist that once stood on the outside of the corner. It was reprofiled in 2015, the last change to the layout.

12. Swimming Pool

    A high-speed left-right flick around the Rainier III swimming pool, added in 1973. Commitment here is the difference between a good lap and a great one.

13. Pool Exit

    A slower right-left that sends the cars back towards the harbour. Use too much kerb on the way out and the wall is waiting.

14. La Rascasse

    A slow, almost 180° right-hander around the building that gives the corner its name. The pit lane entry sits on the inside.

15. Anthony Noghès

    The final right onto the start straight, named after the man who organised the first Monaco Grand Prix. A clean exit is worth a tenth on the run to the line.

How the layout has changed

Monaco looks unchanged, but very little of it is original. The principality has rebuilt its seafront several times since 1929, and the circuit has followed.

• 1929The first race runs on a 3.18 km layout through the same streets. It is won in a Bugatti.
• 1955The start and finish move to the harbour straight, before returning to Boulevard Albert 1er in 1963.
• 1973Land reclaimed from the sea brings a longer tunnel under a new hotel and a new section around the swimming pool to La Rascasse.
• 1976Sainte Dévote and Anthony Noghès are tightened to slow the cars.
• 1986The fast harbour chicane becomes the slower, two-90° Nouvelle Chicane.
• 1997–2003The swimming pool corners are reshaped, the harbour section is widened, and the run from the pool to La Rascasse is straightened.
• 2015Tabac is reprofiled. This is the 3.337 km layout in use today.

In April the Historic Grand Prix uses the same streets, and the all-electric series has raced the full layout since 2022. The track is built from scratch each spring and taken down within three weeks of the last race.

Why it is so hard to pass

Monaco is the clearest example of how a layout's width and its straights decide the racing more than its corners do. The track was drawn for cars a fraction of today's size. A modern Grand Prix car is around 2 metres wide and over 5.5 metres long, and on most of the lap the racing line takes up nearly all of the usable road.

The only real braking zone that follows a long, fast run is the Nouvelle Chicane, and the tunnel exit leaves little room to set up a move. Everywhere else, the car behind loses downforce in the dirty air and has nowhere to go. That makes qualifying position decisive and turns many races into a question of strategy rather than speed.

Those weaknesses are also the most interesting problems to work on. For more on how the layout is put together, read Designing Monaco from scratch, or our guides to overtaking zones and hairpin design.

Ideas for your remaster

The Remaster button opens the traced layout in the designer with all 15 corners named. You can move any point and the lap time, speed trace and corner analysis update as you go. A few places to start:

Lengthen the run to the Nouvelle Chicane. A longer straight after the tunnel, or a tighter Portier, sets up a real braking zone. Watch what it does to the speed trace.

Rethink the harbour. The Tabac-to-Rascasse section is the slowest flowing part of the lap. Can a wider swimming pool complex create a second passing chance?

Change the class. Run the same layout with a different class of car and compare the lap times. The hairpin feels very different in a kart.

Finish it properly. Add track width, kerbs, run-off and a pit lane so it reads like a real venue.

When you're happy with it, share your version with its own link. The original stays here for the next person to remaster.

Frequently asked questions

Layout traced from the open circuit data in bacinger/f1-circuits (MIT licence). Circuit facts: Wikipedia. RaceTrackDesigner is not affiliated with the circuit, its organisers or any racing series.