Formula One: A Viewer's Guide to the Monaco Grand Prix

We enjoyed an eventful race in Turkey, from drama on the first corner, to amazing and daring moves, to just plain hesitance.

The Formula One series enters the city of Monaco and will start its practise on Thursday. Now if you can remember last year, it was a McLaren showdown all the way to the finish line with a 1, 2 finish. Alonso took first place with Hamilton a battered and bruised second (the start of a not so co-operative team).

However, with the technical regulation changes this year, we look forward to a much more exciting race!

We could see plenty of crashes and shunts. With the absence of traction control, there are only few favoured to win (not so different than any F1 race!)

Oh, there will definitely be a Ferrari strength with a McLaren threat.  However, with the sudden development and calmness of Sauber BMW and the overdue results of Williams, we will have to place our bets on team strategy and qualifying positions. The track is so narrow that not much overtaking will be seen at the front of the grid.

Monaco has always been a grueling test on drivers, but this year will be even worse for them. Super soft tyres will be in use along with hard tyres, and with no traction control, the tight downhill corners will sort the good from the bad.

The first corner of the first lap will show the maturity of the drivers, as they all will want out at the same time of the narrow turn. It would be an easy guess that there will be a pile up at the back of the grid.

Now that is purely on track action. Off track, we will see squabbling between drivers and teams over tyre strategies and pit strategies. The most important question will be "How does the car feel?"  Only the experienced drivers can really answer with confidence.

This is where young guns McLaren may fail to show the goods this time and only just be in reach of a win. However, a certain Italian squad who have been here many times, and who has the two most calm and team-playing drivers available, can already smell victory!