The day an F1 lost a diamond in the middle of the Monaco Grand Prix
George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, the Monaco Grand Prix and a missing diamond. All this is not part of the scenario offourteen from the oceanbut of a very real event which took place on the Rock in 2004.
Ever since its inception four years earlier, the Jaguar Racing team had failed to deliver results commensurate with the ambitions Ford, the marque’s owner, had placed in it. As sales rumors swelled, Nav Sidhu, the team’s communications director, decided to do everything to justify the staggering budget of this automotive adventure.
As he details at The Drivewho investigated the affair, Sidhu believed at the time that F1 was not exploiting enough the marketing opportunities of the Monaco Grand Prix, which was attended by many celebrities.
This year, Warner Bros is precisely in full promotion for Ocean’s Twelve. A glamorous heist film populated by superstars and a bling-bling Grand Prix lined with yachts? The opportunity seems perfect.
To ensure the promotion of the film, Jaguar puts the small dishes in the big ones: cars delivered in the colors of the film, logo on the outfits of the pilots… But above all, in partnership with the diamond dealer Steinmetz, precious stones have been fixed on the nose of vehicles. If the exact value of these gems is debated today, The Drive estimates that the price of each of them is between 180,000 and 300,000 euros.
George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and the Jaguar drivers explained with the nose of a car, in which is encrusted a diamond. In Monaco on May 22, 2004. | Gerard Julien/AFP
A diamond affair
The Principality’s Grand Prix takes place on a particularly narrow, winding track, lined with barriers and where collisions are common. For Sidhu, this is also where all the interest of his brilliance lies; but the communicator did not expect problems to arise so quickly.
From the start, the Jaguar driven by the young Christian Klien (21) hits another car and breaks its spoiler, which gets stuck under a front wheel. Unable to turn or brake, the sinking Jaguar crashes into a wall of tires. Only, once the driver was evacuated and the car extracted by a crane, it was impossible to find the diamond.
For a long time, the legend claimed that one of the race marshals had time to slip the jewel into his pocket, but images analyzed by The Drive demonstrates that before the crash, the nose of the car was already damaged – and the diamond missing.
So there are chances that the gemstone will be detached further up the track. Whether the diamond was picked up by a lucky passerby, washed down the drain in the rain, or ended up in the trash mixed with the rest of the debris, it never surfaced.
However, Sidhu does not regret his marketing move for a second: “The benefits of the promotion far outweighed the costs. […] We generated the equivalent of millions of dollars in media coverage, worldwide.” Successful bet for Jaguar, Steinmetz and Warner Bros: eighteen years later, we are still talking about it.