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 The Formula One championship leader is an old hand at mastering
the most glamorous and historic street circuit in motorsport but he
still finds it as awesome, and stomach-churning, as when he first
arrived as a rookie in 2007.
Asked ahead of Sunday's race which part of the layout most made his
hair stand on end, the Mercedes driver - a winner in the
Mediterranean principality on his way to the 2008 title with McLaren
- smiled.
"There’s not a single part that doesn’t," replied the Briton, who
will be chasing his fifth successive win of the season. "It’s the
whole track.
"I wish you could feel what we feel when we go round," he added.
"It’s like when you go on the scariest roller coaster ride, and when
they drop off the cliff and you go down and that first bit...
"That fear factor, the initial part that lasts for just a split
second - here it’s the whole lap. It’s scary but it’s cool. It’s all
these different emotions in one. It’s just the most incredible
roller coaster ride."
Three rookies will be racing a Formula One car around Monaco for the
first time, with Toro Rosso's Russian Daniil Kvyat standing out as
the only one never to have competed there previously in any of the
junior series.
Hamilton grinned at the thought: "It’s going to be like being in the
room with Freddy Krueger," he said, referring to the fictional
serial killer of horror movie fame.
Hamilton's boyhood hero, the late triple champion Ayrton Senna, was
the master of Monaco with five wins. One qualifying lap in 1988 was
so sensationally quick it seemed almost superhuman.
SO FAST
The Briton has only admiration for such an achievement, knowing only
too well how hard the metal-fenced layout can bite the unwary - and
how fast it feels even if the average speed is the slowest of any
race.
"It’s a circuit that you really have to walk very slowly before you
can run. You’re not running before you get to Sunday probably," he
said.
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"It’s so fast. You go up that hill (to Casino Square) at almost 200
miles an hour, you get up there and you can’t even see the corner at
the top as it drops down. "You’re just looking at the sky and all of a sudden the corner
arrives and you can’t see around it. Oh man, I’m just getting
excited thinking about it."
One mistake, the slightest clip of the crash barriers, can end in
carnage.
Brake a fraction too late, in the new V6 turbo hybrid cars that are
far more prone to skipping out of line, and the wall awaits.
"That’s why it’s the best track because there’s no room for error,"
said Hamilton.
"It’s ridiculous, it’s insane how fast we go through there," he
added of the swimming pool complex after cars have blasted through
the tunnel and out into the sunlight along the harbor side.
"The coolest thing is that they keep the race on, they allow us to
race here. It’s the most real race there is."
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ken Ferris)
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reserved.]
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