F1 stars spin the truth on Monaco's allure 

Carved gaudily out of the stark Riviera escarpment, Monaco is a lodestar for the lavish, a beacon of privilege every bit as powerful as the green light that enticed Jay Gatsby in his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan across Long Island Sound.

Those who submit to the open-wallet surgery of a weekend in Room 801 at the Hotel de Paris, savouring the orange aroma of a Cointreau digestif as the last shafts of sunlight refract off the Mediterranean swell, can console themselves that this is where Churchill found his deepest contentment.

It is through such a prism of reminiscence that the Monaco Grand Prix acquires its lustre. Ghosts of the tragic Ayrton Senna and Princess Grace float through the faded opulence of Casino Square, while the impossible angles of La Rascasse lend fresh immediacy to Nelson Piquet's likening of this race to riding a bicycle around one's living room.

The romanticism, while running counter to any notion of motoring sense or safety, is so irresistible that it hardens into an annual fetish for the curious breed of Formula One tourists who relish proximity to the rich. The folklore of the place renders even the drivers amateur historians, as their eyes mist over at the recollection of Riccardo Patrese's freak victory in 1982 or Senna's celebrated duel with Nigel Mansell a decade later.

For so long as F1 exists, Monaco's anachronistic charms will remain sacrosanct. Plus, the passing years appear to bring a more effortless intermingling of old money and new. Not for nothing do champions Red Bull, the arrivistes for whom money flows every bit as freely as their sickly energy drink, heave into Monte Carlo harbour a customised pontoon resplendent with its own swimming pool and nightclub.

For the next four days F1 will remain giddily, unabashedly inside its self-made cocoon of exaggerated wealth. Or, as the majority of drivers know it, home. Jenson Button and Paul di Resta have long since embraced the Monegasque lifestyle, while Mercedes team-mates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg even share the same apartment block amid the principality's latticework of high-rises.

Hamilton continues to talk breathlessly about inhabiting the Mediterranean's most coveted patch of real estate, admitting: "It's incredible to run around your favourite circuit every day. I go through the tunnel and I just cannot believe I am here." A noble effort, Lewis. We will soon hear multiple variations upon this theme, as he and his colleagues seek ever more disingenuous reasons to dress up the real reason why they love Monaco so dearly. In mitigation, their forefathers were just as culpable. Keke Rosberg maintained that he came for the "central part of Europe", while Mika Hakkinen identified the prime attraction thus: "There's beautiful sunshine and it's warm."

Why not live in Eilat, then? "Here there's a better social life," Patrese replied. It took bluff Austrian Gerhard Berger, however grudgingly, to acknowledge the truth: "Nice boats, nice buildings, lots of friends. And now the honest answer? Tax." Yes, if you happen to be an F1 aristocrat with even a fraction of Button's pounds 58?million fortune, Monaco is almost de rigueur as a nesting site.

Even in 2013, Prince Albert's gilded fiefdom preserves impressive financial secrecy, somehow contriving to withhold income taxes on those residents with sufficient cash to qualify for a permit and afford the exorbitant property prices. For young stars in the highest echelon of motorsport it is the perfect bolt-hole.

They flit around constantly, ensuring they cannot earn a disproportionate amount of income in any one place, with the added sweetener of no nasty levies to pay on the vast riches they accrue en route. So the next time you hear Hamilton gush about Monaco being his "spiritual home", you might care to note that his previous country of residence was Switzerland, where his departure coincided with a tax law that might have caused him to pay millions in backdated payments. At least JK Rowling had the decency to expose this transparent logic of the uber-rich, arguing: "One of the reasons why I stay in the UK, why I'm not based in Monaco, is that I believe my country helped me."

But no sooner does one raise this pertinent notion than it is silenced here by the scream of a thousand horsepower. We are in Monaco, messieurs-dames, the land where the sense of collective responsibility has yet to reach. We are invited not to a political rally but to a party of Moulin Rouge extravagance, where all reason is suspended and where a strange cornucopia of characters gather to be coated by the soft confetti of money.