David “The Hoff” Hasselhoff at the grand prix in Monaco in May.Jeremy Cato/The Globe and Mail
I am surrounded by the beautiful, the rich and the famous. They are everywhere – Cameron Diaz, Michael Douglas, Prince Albert of Monaco, George Lucas, David Hasselhoff – in the words of the late George Gobel, a great comedian of modest looks and wealth, I feel like a brown suit in a world of tuxedos and plunging ball gowns.
Yes, the Hoff at 60 is a bit of yesterday's man and that well-documented YouTube performance with the hamburger didn't look good. The Hoff is no longer at the top of his game. We all agree on that.
But still, here on the Cote d'Azur, he's a big draw, a famous European pop singer and still the Baywatch boy toy being chased by cameras and crowds and a spectacularly attractive blonde woman in a very short skirt, who is surely a third his age. As one wag put it, nice of The Hoff to bring his niece to the race.
The Hoff, like me (ha, ha), is doing the rounds of the outrageous, multi-level Infiniti Red Bull Energy Station party barge, floating in the harbour beside a fleet of grandiose yachts more impressive and more valuable than the entire Canadian navy. The Energy Station has four massive bars, couches, tables, chairs, bar stools, a restaurant with a full kitchen, high-definition screens everywhere and even a swimming pool at the bottom of which is the painted logo of the Red Bull energy drink. Some of the most beautiful of all lounge here, sipping water, taking in the sun and playing with their smartphones.
Speaking of energy, what about Michael Douglas? He's no spring chicken himself at 68, and a cancer survivor to boot. Yet he looks spry and wiry and ready for action – like he's just downed a six-pack of Red Bulls. I am assuming he's here because the Cannes Film Festival is unfolding just down the road on the French Riviera. Kirk's kid has a Liberace movie to flog. Nonetheless, he's keeping company right beside me at this fabulous lunch. Here I dine on black cod, salad and fresh baguettes. Did I mention Michael Douglas is talking intently with none other than Gerhard Berger, the former Austrian Formula One driver?
Oh, that's a big deal, at least in Monaco on this particular weekend. I am here star-gazing at all the festivities surrounding the 71st running of the jewel in the F1 crown, the Monaco Grand Prix, and Berger matters to the cognescenti. Autosport.com calls him one of the great F1 drivers of all time. He raced from 1983-1997, had 10 wins, 48 podiums and 12 poles driving for Ferrari and McLaren against "the likes of [Nigel] Mansell, [Alain] Prost and [Ayrton] Senna.
Today, he's a former F1 owner who appears to be the personal guide and confidant of Michael Douglas. Their conversation is within earshot. Sorry, can't dish any dirt; mum's the word. But I do ask someone in the know, the veteran F1 marketing man Jason Campbell: Why is Berger here?
Campbell knows everything, I have come to learn. He's deeply involved in "activating" Infiniti's expanded involvement with the defending F1 champions from Red Bull: team driver Sebastian Vettel, 25, was first among the drivers last year and Red Bull finished first among the teams to win the Constructor's title.
Campbell explains to me why it all makes sense to have Berger here. He used to own half of the Scuderia Toro Rosso F1 team. In late 2008, he sold his stake to Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz. Right now, Mateschitz is at the top of the F1 world – or at least as close as it's possible to get to the top of the F1 circuit run with an iron fist by the rather short and physically unimposing Bernie Ecclestone with his 1970s Jackie Stewart hairdo. Speaking of which, the 82-year-old Bernie himself wanders by, looking very much in a hurry and completely alone.
I am surprised by the lack of an entourage and the absence of body guards. Everyone in the know – and I mean everyone in this bubble of an F1 world – has plenty of unflattering things to say about Ecclestone. That said, Campbell tells me that F1 just wouldn't function as smoothly as it does without a little dictatorship at the top of the show.
Bernie keeps the chaos at bay. He somehow manages to rein in billionaires and millionaires and high-strung drivers who, without him, might not be able to agree on the time of day, much less how to stage and promote and finish races all over the world – and do so making a fabulous profit.
No race is more glamorous – and I am assuming more profitable – than the one here in Monaco. The morning of the Sunday race, then, is a swirl. We are ferried to the Station aboard Red Bull taxi boats of a menacing size and with a ferocious prow on each of them. They can barely squeeze between the spaces between yachts left there for scores of tenders and taxis. The little pontoon boats all around us look like the aquatic equivalent of peasants. I feel so … regal, so Hasselhoff-ish. More Taittinger, please.
With minutes to go before the race, I head to the grandstands across from the pit garage of the Red Bull team. I arrive in time to witness the actress Cameron Diaz blowing kisses to the crowd. They love her, even the fans packed precariously along the steep embankment high above turn 19, just below the Prince's palace. They cheer and the whoop as she walks the pits.
But then, this is a race like none other. There is a hairpin called – wait for it – the "Grand Hotel Hairpin" and just past it the drivers fly through a tunnel. A tunnel! At 300 km/h.
Today, though, it looks like the Red Bull team is not going to win. That's because both Mercedes drivers, Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton, qualified on the first row, with Rosberg on pole. Vettel and fellow Infiniti Red Bull driver Mark Webber "got our asses kicked" in qualifying, as Webber told me, and are relegated to row two. Passing on the tight Monaco course is almost impossible, so unless there is a mishap – on the track, in the pits – the Mercedes cars will finish 1-2, with the Infiniti Red Bulls of Vettel and Webber 3-4.
As it turns out, Hamilton badly times a pit stop and loses ground to Vettel and Webber. Rosberg, a 27-year-old German whose father Keke won this race 30 years before, holds on to his lead from start to finish, however. Despite a jumble of accidents behind them, including a 30-odd-minute delay when the race stopped completely to clean up debris, the top four drivers are the same four who started at the head of the pack. Only Hamilton suffered but not to a pass. There is no passing in Monaco. He lost the podium in the pits. In other words, this race is a parade or a procession.
After the race, Vettel expresses a mixture of frustration and resignation: "I was a bit surprised by the slow pace of the opening laps. Usually you expect two [Mercedes} silver arrows in front of you, but they were more like buses today going for a cruise on the first couple of laps," he said, adding, "Not the most exciting race, just waiting for the checkered flag."
The race may not have been thrilling, but the scene in Monaco was breathtaking. And to think they'll do it all again this weekend in Montreal.