There are 8 former winners of a race at Monaco Grand Prix, in three different categories, among the very competitive field of drivers entered in this year’s 4th Monaco E-Prix. Two of them won in F2, formerly called GP2, Sam Bird and Stoffel Vandoorne. Most of the 24 drivers know this track, except five who had never experienced the long F1 version (3.3km) until this morning.

In 2009, Oliver Turvey won a Formula Renault race in the streets of Monaco, then René Rast won as well the next two years, but aboard a Porsche entered in the very glamourous SuperCup. Another talented British driver, Sam Bird, beat all his rivals two years in a row, but in two different categories, Formula Renault in 2012, then GP2 (now F2) in 2013. That same year, Nico Müller won the Formula Renault race included in the schedule of the World Series by Renault. A rookie this year in FE, Norman Nato also won in this category, in 2014. And two weeks only after the first ever Monaco E-Prix, in May 2015, Stoffel Vandoorne won in GP2 (F2), just like Bird.

Two years later, in 2017, Oliver Rowland won the feature race in F2 (formerly GP2), on Saturday, while Nyck de Vries won the sprint race on Sunday morning. The Dutch wonder, who lead the FE World Championship after Valencia last month, for Mercedes EQ, doubled his tally in 2019, still in F2, when he won the feature race for ART Grand Prix.

Among the 24 drivers on the grid this Saturday, five only never used the track in F1 Grand Prix mode : Jake Dennis, Alexander Sims, André Lotterer, Nick Cassidy and Tom Blomqvist. They all discovered the 3.3km version this morning during free practice 1 and 2. Last but not least, five of them, as well, raced here in F1 : Seb Buemi, Jean-Eric Vergne, Stoffel Vandoorne, Pascal Werhlein, Luca di Grassi. The best result was achieved by JEV, 8th in 2013 in a Toro Rosso with a Ferrari engine.