So at the Monaco grand prix you want to have your tires really soft. And you don’t really want to have to use your hard tires very much at all. But the rules say you have to use them at some point in the race.

The one thing that we know about Monaco is that there is often a safety car. And that it’s often at the begining. So it seems likely that at least some of the teams will start on the hard tires and hope for a safety car period in the first couple of laps. That way they will have used their hard tires and complied with the regulations and then they’ll be able to spend most of the race on the ideal tires.

But Alex isn’t there something weird about the way that the safety car period works this year you seem to be saying? Well as it’s almost certain to be crucial I thought I’d better repeat the new rules here.

The pit lane is closed when the safety car is deployed. When the safety car crosses the pit entrance with an F1 car directly behind him the pit lane is open.

Then one-half to one lap before the restart the safety car will signal that all lapped cars go past the safety car and rejoin at the back. This is to stop a backmarker being in the middle of the pack.

So those are the new safety car rules. We’ll probably need them just because Monaco is Monaco, but there’s also a chance it might rain…

Well with all of this going on and the usual Monaco madness it’s going to be a great race whoever wins.