Twenty-One Years Ago, An F1 Team Lost A $300k Diamond During A Movie Promotion Stunt

It's Monaco Grand Prix weekend, and every time I see Formula 1 cars wheeling around the streets of the principality, I think about how there is so much racing history at each and every one of those corners.

But Friday was the anniversary of one of my favorite Monaco stories, and it's one that we don't talk about nearly enough: the time that an F1 team lost a diamond valued at over $300,000 as part of a movie promotion stunt gone wrong.

So, before we get into it, a bit of history.

Back in the 1990s, there was a team called Stewart Grand Prix that was, of course, started by F1 champ and absolute legend of a human being, Sir Jackie Stewart.

The team debuted at the start of the 1997 Formula 1 season and served as the Ford Motor Company's works team.

Stewart Grand Prix's final season was in 1999, at which point they were purchased by Ford, who decided to use the team to promote the Jaguar brand, which they owned at the time.

Christian Klien of Jaguar Racing in action during practice for the 2004 Monaco F1 Grand Prix. (Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images)

The team was not particularly successful, and according to Motorsport, they were looking for anything they could do to get the team some notoriety.

So, ahead of the 2004 Monaco Grand Prix, the team partnered with the folks behind the movie Ocean's 12, the second of the George Clooney/Brad Pitt series of heist films.

The plan? To promote the movie, the cast of the film would show up to the race, while the team's cars — driven by Christian Klien and Mark Webber — would each have a real-deal $300,00 diamond embedded in its nose, even though the movie has nothing to do with stealing diamonds and everything to do with stealing a Faberge egg.

The Jaguar Racing R5 with a diamond embedded in the nose ahead of the 2004 Monaco Grand Prix. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

That doesn't sound like a great idea, and that's because it wasn't.

Klien was a rookie at the time, and once the race started, he was almost immediately caught out by the circuit's notorious hairpin and hit a barrier, damaging the front of his car and ending his day early.

But while Klien was okay, there was no sign of the diamond, and there hasn't been in the 21 years since.

However, the stunt worked as far as getting the team some attention and they ended up being sold to Red Bull who took over starting with the 2005 season and have of course gone on to achieve great success.

In their debut season, Red Bull also did a movie promotion for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, but that time they refrained from sticking anything valuable in the nose of the car.