Why the Monte Carlo Rally Is the Greatest Car Race on the Planet

“I think for the drivers, the two events which every driver wants to win are Monte Carlo and Finland,” Jari-Matti Latvala tells me. A Finn himself, he retired from chasing the championship and now runs the GAZOO Racing Toyota team, the reigning constructor’s title holder. His first Monte was in 2004, but he has a hard time picking out what has changed in those 21 years. It’s warmer this year, he points out, but the Monte always waffles between hot years and cold ones, patchy ice or deep snow.

Certainly, the Monte is the most historic event in the World Rally Championship. It first ran in 1911. It is in the pantheon of the greatest old races like the Indianapolis 500, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and, on two wheels, the Isle of Man TT.

The Rallye Monte Carlo adheres to motorsport’s oldest formula: road-legal cars racing as fast as possible on the public roads. For the special stages, they are closed to racing only. For the transits in between them, you might find yourself on the same roundabout as the competitors. When I first pulled into town, I ended up stuck in traffic behind the Number 30 car of Yuki Yamamoto, his WRC2 Toyota GR Yaris loudly grumbling at a stoplight. For fans, this is part of the thrill. You don’t just watch the rally; to some degree, you join it.

“Logistically, it’s the most challenging event of the year,” Alex Kihurani tells me over a coffee in London a few weeks before the event. He recently won the British Rally Championship with his driver Chris Ingram, and he is the only American competing in the WRC. He has four Montes under his belt, including a two-wheel-drive win there. He reminds me that while the Rallye Monte Carlo has its official start and finish in the Principality of Monaco, it’s headquartered in the mountain town of Gap, three hours away.

The alpine special stages themselves are scattered an hour or more from there. This being my first Monte, I tailed veteran British motorsports journalist Lawrence Butcher and his photographer Dan Bathie. Butcher warned me that the last time he covered this event, he logged 2,500 miles in a week.

The Monte used to be even more of a pain in its heyday of the ’60s and ’70s. Teams raced across all of Europe into a collection point in southern France, then rallied into Monaco. In the legendary 1964 event, when Paddy Hopkirk in a tiny Mini beat the might of a factory-backed Ford team, competitors started as far away as Glasgow or Warsaw.

Getting to the stage roads are only part of the problem. The Monte has the most difficult terrain of any rally. Since it runs up and over mountains, a stage that might start down on dry pavement might be covered in snow at the top, and glazed with black ice on the run down the other side. Or the first stage in the morning might be icy but the second stage might be completely clear once competitors arrive. Teams employ “meteo crews” to walk the stages on foot, taking detailed photos and notes, as well as temperature and humidity readings, sent back to a meteorologist on staff.

This is also the only rally of the year where all teams, not just the top drivers, are allowed what’s called an “ice crew.” These consist of a driver and codriver, usually active or retired rally drivers themselves, to drive the stage as close to an hour and a half before the stage starts. They amend the race team’s stage notes, noting how much ice is present, how much dirt has been kicked up by drivers cutting corners, or how much snow fans have kicked onto the racing line, just for fun.

It is impossible to pick one tire that will work in all of these conditions. As such, teams mix and match. They might run four slick tires on a dry afternoon stage, pull over, and fit two studded winter tires for an icy stage that runs into the cold night. No pit crew is allowed. It’s the driver and codriver themselves acting as mechanics, often also resetting shocks and roll bars at the same time. They’ll run the tires in a cross, with one stud in the front and one in the back. The ice crew’s information on whether there are more icy left-handers or right determines which corner gets what tire. There isn’t another rally that asks so much of its teams.

There is something else to say about the Monte, beyond its history and its glory and its difficulty: it is staggeringly beautiful. To say that every drive between stages is scenic would be an understatement. Over the ensuing three days after the fireworks of that first night, I slept in the shadows of castles and in off-season hotels at bargain prices. I got rally history from sweet old ladies and drank good local Côtes du Rhône for a euro fifty a cup. I took a ski lift to a stage, made coffee on the top of a mountain, traded stories over campfires overlooking broad valleys, and sat on the rugged slopes of high Provence surrounded by wild thyme.

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I watched as cars slid sideways out of hairpin corners on Roman roads with nothing but a short stone wall between them and a thousand-foot drop. And I heard their exhaust echoing through the gorge and off those sheer cliff-sides. How striking it was, waterfalls so distant as to appear near, the sounds of rocks click-clacking as they tumbled down loose scree, sun filtering through campfire smoke and catching the backs of swallows high off the ground, at eye level, like the chase helicopters that scared them off every few minutes.

This year’s cars are less sophisticated than before, doing without the expensive-to-maintain hybrid system of the past few seasons. They still cost around $800,000 to build, Butcher estimates over fondue fries at the “MacDo” in Gap. Retaining their sophisticated suspension and all-wheel drive, they have been made lighter, but also more powerful and tricky to drive. 2025 sees competitors racing on a brand-new tire, Hankook, with almost no testing time for the title contenders. Even the manufacturer admitted that the tire wasn’t quite ready, and we saw multiple crashes among the top drivers.

Reigning world champion Thierry Neuville hit a patch of ice going into one hairpin and ripped the suspension off his car, limping back to the service park with a wheel dangling in the breeze. Former world champion Ött Tänak ripped the back end of his car off, taking a tree with him. He finished the rally, as did the old master Sébastien Ogier, who slid into a ditch and through a fence almost immediately after the start. He went on to win, his 10th victory at the Monte, breaking his own record.

I saw him hold his 10 fingers up for the camera at the awards ceremony in Casino Square in Monaco. He was a little more tarnished than his gleaming trophy, and his eyes were weary behind his smile. Everyone in this rally had been through it. I myself smelled like roadside flares and campfire smoke, my boots and overalls dirty from hiking up the side of a mountain to watch the final stage of the event, the legendary Col de Turini. I’d slept in my car, and somehow managed to fix a flat I’d gotten on the Route Napoleon deep in the night.

For all its challenges, the rally holds onto its glamour. Even as the cars change and the format alters, the fans and drivers share the same manic energy. After everything, it remains the greatest car race on the planet. Through all its years, the Monte is still the Monte.