Monaco Grand Prix 2013: Formula One stars love to spin the truth on their affection for millionaires' principality 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," Ricardo 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 £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 from 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 bolthole. 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 he timed his departure immaculately to coincide 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 über-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.