Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Since the start of the championship in 1950, Formula One has not had a home winner of its showcase Monaco Grand Prix and Charles Leclerc has enjoyed little luck in the principality since he joined Ferrari in 2019.
The 'will it be this year?' question, not asked in 2020 when there was no race due to the Covid-19 pandemic, has grown more persistent.
The 26-year-old has yet to stand on his home podium in five attempts, four with Ferrari, but he can end that 'jinx' on Sunday.
"Monaco is very special for me. True that it hasn't been the most successful race for me until now," Leclerc said after finishing third in last weekend's Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola.
"However, the pace was always there and that gives me the confidence that it will be the case this year too. However, Monaco is so specific that we need to start a little bit from a blank page.
"Free practice is super, super important to build the pace little by little. But I'm confident we'll be strong."
The twisting, metal-fenced streets have certainly not been kind to the kid who grew up watching the red Ferraris and travelling the track by bus on his way to school, dreaming of one day racing there.
In 2021 he secured pole but could not start due to a driveshaft failure.
In 2022 he was fastest again in qualifying but finished only fourth. He also crashed a 1974 ex-Niki Lauda Ferrari when he drove it for a demonstration run at that year's Historic Monaco Grand Prix.
Last year Leclerc ended up sixth. In 2019 he failed to score.
This time he arrives with four podiums from seven races and second in the standings dominated as ever by Red Bull's Max Verstappen.
Lando Norris of Great Britain driving for McLaren F1 Team Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Absorbing battle
Red Bull's triple world champion won last year and his increasingly absorbing battle with McLaren's Lando Norris is the talk of the sport.
Norris beat the Red Bull in Miami for his first F1 win and finished second in the races either side of that in China and Imola.
Verstappen has meanwhile won five out of seven and started all on pole position, a run of eight in a row including last season, equalling two Formula One records in the process. No driver has ever taken nine successive poles.
"You've got two guys at the top of their game going at it like (heavyweight champions) Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk," commented Red Bull team boss Christian Horner after Norris finished 0.7 of a second behind Verstappen at the last race.
"It was literally sector for sector, fantastic racing at the end of the race... You can see the cars are converging. The latest upgrades, they are all becoming very similar."
McLaren will be running a car with a special Ayrton Senna livery, a tribute to their late triple champion who died 30 years ago at Imola and who remains the most successful driver around Monaco.
"It's about time someone put him (Verstappen) under pressure and he felt a bit of nerves again, because I'm sure he hasn't felt it for a while," Norris said on Wednesday. "I don't want to be overconfident, that's never been me, but we want to come into races now and be confident in racing against the Red Bull, racing against Ferrari, because we are in the mix with them."
Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton will also be one to watch, given the seven times world champion's past success, while RB's Daniel Ricciardo is another previous winner.
So too is Verstappen's team mate Sergio Perez and Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso.
A Ferrari races through the streets of Monte Carlo Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Formula One statistics for the Monaco Grand Prix, round eight of the 24-race championship:
Lap distance: 3.337km. Total distance: 260.286km (78 laps)
2023 pole position: Max Verstappen (Netherlands) Red Bull One minute 11.365 seconds
2023 winner: Verstappen
Race lap record: Lewis Hamilton (Britain) Mercedes 1:12.909, 2021
Start time: 1300 GMT (1500 local)
Monaco
Leclerc can become the first Monegasque to win at home since the championship started in 1950 but he has yet to stand on the podium in Monaco.
Monaco is the shortest and slowest track on the calendar, and the race with most laps. It is also the only one to cover less than 300km and only 34% of the lap is at full throttle.
The 180 degree turn six hairpin is the slowest corner of the year, with cars taking it at 45kph.
This year's race is the 70th edition in championship history and 81st since the first grand prix there in 1929.
The late triple world champion Ayrton Senna holds the record for most Monaco wins -- six, including five in a row with McLaren between 1989 and 1993.
A safety car deployment is highly likely.
McLaren are the most successful team in Monaco, with 15 wins since their debut in 1966.
In 1996, Frenchman Olivier Panis won from 14th on the starting grid -- the lowest winning start position to date. Since 1950, only 10 times has the race been won by a driver starting lower than third.
Five former Monaco winners will be racing on Sunday: Fernando Alonso (2006, 2007), Hamilton (2008, 2016, 2019), Max Verstappen (2021, 2023), Perez (2022), Daniel Ricciardo (2018).
Verstappen's last two Monaco wins were races in which he led from start to finish.
Championship lead
Verstappen has led the championship for a record 46 successive races dating back to Spain in May 2022 and arrives in Imola 48 points clear of Ferrari's Charles Leclerc.
Red Bull are 56 points clear of Ferrari.
Wins
Verstappen has won five of seven races this season, with Ferrari's Carlos Sainz triumphant in Australia and McLaren's Lando Norris in Miami.
Sainz and Norris are the only drivers to have beaten Red Bull since 2022.
Hamilton has a record 103 career victories from 339 starts but is chasing his first since 2021 -- a run of 52 races without a win.
Red Bull won 21 of 22 races last year, with Verstappen victorious in a record 19, and have won 36 of the last 40.
The team have won 118 races and are fourth in the all-time list of winners. Ferrari lead with 244, McLaren have 184 and Mercedes 125.
Verstappen has won 59 grands prix and is third on the all-time list. Michael Schumacher is second on 91.
Pole position
Hamilton has a record 104 career poles, his most recent in Hungary last year.
Verstappen has taken the first seven poles of the season, equalling Alain Prost's 1993 record, and eight in a row including the last race of 2023 -- equalling Ayrton Senna's 1988-89 record.
Podiums
Verstappen has 104 career podiums, Hamilton 197.
The Red Bull driver set a record of 21 podiums in a season last year but Michael Schumacher remains the only driver to have stood on the podium in every race of a season (2002). Verstappen cannot equal that this year, having retired in Australia.
Milestone
Should Verstappen take pole in Monaco, he will be the first driver to take nine in a row.
He will also be the first driver since Italian Alberto Ascari in 1953 to hold simultaneously the outright records for most consecutive wins (10) and poles.
-Reuters