On the fourteenth of May 1972, a Frenchman in a car nobody expected to win led every lap of the Monaco Grand Prix in continuous heavy rain. Jean-Pierre Beltoise had one Formula One World Championship victory in his career. This was it. It was also the last championship win for BRM — a team that had once been the finest in Formula One.

This episode takes that race as its centrepiece and asks a question that three other races on the same calendar date help to answer: what does it actually take, at Monaco, to beat a car that should be faster than yours?

Stirling Moss answered it in 1961 with a year-old Lotus against the works Ferrari. Ayrton Senna answered it in 1988 with a qualifying lap he later said he couldn't fully explain. And Michael Schumacher answered it differently in Barcelona in 1995 — not with something beyond conscious understanding, but with the right number of pit stops.

Three different answers. One persistent question. This is Chequered Past.

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Music by #Mubert Music Rendering