Monaco is more wealthy than the rest of Europe put together. As a result, it is the world’s heaviest place.

If a bomb went off in Monaco harbour during the Grand Prix, it is estimated that we would lose 86 percent of the world’s supply of men who look like George Hamilton.

The price of a gin & tonic in Monaco is actually as a reference point on the international currency market. At the time of writing, 1 MG&T = 457 USD.

Monaco has long been the home of choice for any F1 driver who would rather live in what looks like a well-kept block of council flats than pay any tax.

One of the most infamous ex-F1 drivers to live in the area is Taki Inoue who is regularly spotted attempting to cross Casino Square only to get hit by a passing car causing him to roll over its bonnet in an amusing way.

Since many current F1 drivers live in Monaco they probably know some backstreet shortcuts to improve their times. One of the drivers who lives in the principality is Lewis Hamilton who has an apartment in Le Maison de Beaucoup D’Argent building on the harbour or, as he insists on calling it, ‘The projects of the southside, yea. Wicked’.

Uniquely in the F1 calendar, trophy giving at the Monaco race takes place on a set of steps. This is because in 1874 the short-lived Prince Malheureusement III declared podiums illegal.At the same time, he outlawed rotating flags but sadly failed to draw up a law forbidding slightly awkward interviews with three Formula 1 drivers.

The Aston Martin CC100 concept before it was filleted and eaten, yesterday

There was disaster for Aston Martin today as the company’s brand new CC100 concept was caught, gutted and eaten by a toothless, dungaree-wearing American inbred.

The bearded, swamp-dwelling simpleton, identified only as ‘Cletus’, spoke exclusively to Sniff Petrol about how he came to catch the priceless one-off just minutes after it was revealed; ‘First I saw him, I couldn’t believe ma own eyes,’ he drawled. ‘He jus’ come swimmin’ up the creek, bold as you like. ‘Cept it wasn’t a creek, it wuz more like a street or somethin’, and he wunt swimmin’ he wuz more kinda rollin’, but I know a catfish when I sees it. So I throws out my line and, darn it, I done caught the bastard. He sure did struggle and he done make this unholy noise, kinda more machine than animal, but I gone smack him with ma shovel and that show him. Heh-heh-heh-heeeh.’

According to eye witness reports, Aston Martin representatives looked on in horror as their hand made centenary celebrating concept was bashed repeatedly with a spade, thrown into the back of a large Chevrolet pick-up and driven back to a partially collapsed shack in a part of Georgia that isn’t really on any maps.

‘Yep, I took the ugly critter back to ma house and I done gut him,’ Cletus confirmed. ‘Then I calls in Bobby-Jo and Sue-Ann and Bradon-Lynn and Peggy-Lou and other Bobby-Jo and Britney-Febreze and Solange-Mountaindew and the one who don’t talk so good and I says “Eat up kids!” and one of them say, “But daddy, this done taste like aluminum” and I says “Shut up you dang ingrate” but I be thinkin’ he gotta a point. Wait? What ? That dang thing be A VEH-HICLE? Dagnabbit! ’

‘We will get our car back,’ said an Aston Martin spokesman. ‘Basically, we just have to wait for an idiot to poo it out. Which, ironically, is the same design process we used for the Cygnet.’

A McLaren Honda, yesterday

Earlier today McLaren announced an engine supply deal with Honda, starting in two season’s time. Now spies within the Woking team say the rekindled partnership is just the tip of a very retro iceberg which will see the number one driver slot for 2015 occupied by French racing legend Alain Prost.

‘We’re going really old school with this,’ said a team insider. ‘And what better way to wind things back to the late ‘80s than by getting Alain in the car. He’s quick, he’s experienced and he still has the same hairstyle.’

According to our mole, the shock signing of a 58-year-old driver is part of a raft of extraordinarily backward-looking moves from McLaren which also includes asking Vodafone to make their logo look ‘more Marlboro-y’ and lobbying for the return of the Portuguese Grand Prix.

Most shockingly, insiders say McLaren is working flat out on Prost’s 2015 team mate which they intend to be an animatronic recreation of Ayrton Senna. Spies say the Senna robot borrows much of the technology that allows Ron Dennis to display basic human emotions and will contain a special algorithm that makes it wait until the end of the season before it twats into Prost.

‘This new deal with Honda has really inspired us,’ our factory insider gushed. ‘Although obviously it won’t last forever and we’re already planning for 2019 when we switch to a generic Ford engine and then 2020 when our MP4-35 will be forced to use a catastrophically crap Peugeot V10.’

‘Mind you,’ he added. ‘It’ll still be faster than this season’s car.’

Nico Rosberg, yesterday

Sniff Petrol can exclusively reveal that Nico Rosberg is to be given pole position at every Grand Prix for the rest of the season in a sensational F1 conspiracy designed to promote greater on-track action.

‘After Nico managed actual pole in Bahrain and Spain we couldn’t help noticing that it gave quite an interesting start to the race,’ said our F1 mole. ‘There was lots of this so-called “overtaking” business and for some reason TV viewers seem to like that. So, for the rest of the season we’ve decided to rig qualifying to give us a driver on pole who cannot sustain that position for very long.’

According to our source, the Mercedes driver’s natural combination of strong starts and an ability to go backwards very soon afterwards made him the only choice for this remarkable manipulation. ‘We thought about other drivers but Hamilton is too difficult and Webber always makes a cock of the start,’ our spy confided. ‘Of course, there’s always Jenson Button but putting that McLaren on pole would be completely unbelievable.’

It is a common mistake amongst English speakers to believe that Circuit de Catalunya literally translates as ‘Circuit of Catalonia’. In fact, the name has nothing to do with the surrounding area and derives from an unhygienic local practise involving sardines.

From 2006 until 2012 the Spanish Grand Prix was sponsored by successful Spanish firms like Telefonica and Santander. Now that Spain has no money left, the 2013 race is officially entitled Gran Premio de Espana El Bailiffo.

The main straight at the Circuit de Catalunya is modelled on La Rambla, the famous main street through Barcelona itself. As a result, every driver is relentlessly pestered by mediocre street artists as they pass the pits and when they enter the DRS activation zone they will almost certainly have their wallet stolen.

In 2006 Alain Prost capitalised on the Spanish race’s famous inability to hold the attention by sneaking onto the track in an old Ligier chassis powered by a Peugeot XUD engine he found in a scrapyard. He was able to clatter around for 27 laps before being spotted, shortly after overtaking Jarno Trulli’s Toyota.

Michael Schumacher won the Spanish Grand Prix a record six times. In 2004 this achievement was recognised by Spanish fans who voted to rename turn three as The Shovel Faced Cheating Kraut Bastard Bend.

Spain is the most bigoted race on the Grand Prix calendar. In 2009 Lewis Hamilton famously suffered racist abuse from the Spanish crowd but it was less widely reported that at the same race Rubens Barichello was mocked for appearing to have learning difficulties and Sebastien Buemi was subjected a series of satirical dance routines because his name sounds a bit like the Catalan word for ‘bender’.

A hashtag, yesterday

There was consternation at Lotus this week as the team announced the imminent departure of its Hashtags Director, James Unfunnie.

Unfunnie is seen by many as the man responsible for evolving the Enstone team’s Twitter presence from casual and informative to relentless and extremely irritating.  He is also credited with Lotus’s profoundly annoying habit of adopting unamusing hashtags and then appending them to their Tweets ad nauseam without realising that no one else is using them and that, as a result, they are not only smugly irritating but also utterly redundant.

Lotus is quick to admit that Unfunnie’s departure will come as a blow and that it is already looking for his replacement. ‘We will of course replace James in due course, as soon as we can find someone with no self awareness and no sense of humour whatsoever,’ confirmed a spokesman. ‘I don’t suppose you have a number for Nigel Mansell?’ he added mysteriously.

An MG6 not being sold, yesterday

There was bad news for MG this week as the latest UK registration figures showed the company’s sales have actually become a minus number.

‘This is unprecedented,’ said car sales analyst Carl Sayles-Analist. ‘It seems that last month the MG6 became so unsuccessful that the MG factory started sucking in old MGs. When you take that into account, their April sales figure was minus 17.’

A spokesman from the company’s bureau of correctional information in China was quick to rebuff suggestions that this was a problem; ‘This is exactly what we hoped for,’ he said briskly. ‘With our concerted campaign of no advertising, inept Facebook-based promotions and a mountain of money wasted on racing a BTCC car that no one has heard of, we always hoped that our sales would enter minus numbers. Now we have more MGs than when we started with. We win! No, wait…’

‘MG6? What the fuck is an MG6?’ said a man who later turned out to work for MG.

Nigel Mansell in the ’90s, yesterday

Jersey police today confirmed they have arrested motorsport legend Nigel Mansell and are questioning him over three allegations relating to his past.

The first matter under investigation dates back to 1995 when it is alleged that Mansell attempted to ‘force himself’ into a McLaren MP4/10 even though he was ‘far too fat’. It is also claimed that in the same year Mansell buggered off after two races and ‘completely fucked’ the McLaren team.

In a second allegation dating back to 1993, prosecutors say they want to ask Mansell about an incident in the East Midlands in which he ‘banged’ a 42-year-old man, thought to be fellow driver Tiff Needell, and then tried to deny it was anything to do with him.

The third and final allegation is more recent, dating back to 2010 when Mansell started the Le Mans 24 hour race and crashed out almost immediately leaving his own sons ‘completely shafted’.

Reporters outside St Helier police station have seen no sign of the British racing legend thus far but are confident he remains inside since they can hear a dull, insistent moaning.

Flavio Briatore, yesterday

Flavio Briatore has ruled out a return to F1, stating emphatically that ‘Formula 1 is like wine, is women, is all things, maybe looking is nice but super sexy time.’

In an interview with Every Other Sunday magazine, the former Renault team principal firmly expressed his ambivalence about future involvement in the sport; ‘Is no time for me to make is happy accident for believe is to make the special,’ the amply gutted swordsman insisted. ‘You know, is me the person, is also the blah blah blah, you know? And that is make what is always forwards and is not always with true but also the heart, because this is the thing, is moment of what happened but that is future also, yes?’

Asked if he missed Formula 1, the sex pesty looking billionaire was equally categorical; ‘Why is make imagination for think, and always think, and be make like believe of the special is okay. You know, all times all be helicopter or is speedboat and is be reason but I say, hey, you know, what is for being crazy time? Is, you know, all of this that make super model or super car or what, you know, is all making consistency magic tasty wibble wobble bibble boddle boom boom boom let me hear you say way-o.’

Flavio Briatore is expected to announce his return to Formula 1 next week.

Toto Wolff before he went bonkers mental, yesterday

There was a commotion at Mercedes F1 headquarters this week with news that team executive director Toto Wolff has finally realised he has ‘a totally kickass name.’

‘Oh my God, I had never noticed before,’ Wolff is said to have shouted in his weird Terminator voice. ‘My name is, like, totally kickass. This is so cool. Get out of my way, I need to start roaming the city solving crimes. Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!’

Sources in Brackley say that, following his nominal revelation, the probably-deranged Austrian boss has started wearing a cape, humming his own ‘theme tune’ and shouting ‘super awesome!’ before smashing through a series of specially prepared plasterboard walls with his arms, legs and face.

‘We’re doing our best to ignore the whole thing but it’s getting pretty disruptive,’ admitted a team insider. ‘For example, if you don’t refer to his office as ‘The Citadel of Excellence’ he threatens to throw an actual wolf at you.’

In a troubling development, Merc F1 spies say Wolff has now commandeered a white board in the main engineering office to draw up an ‘action list’ of the following aspirations; ‘solve mysteries’, ‘record soft rock album’, ‘destroy BrawnMan’.