Monaco will be a very special weekend for Formula E, even if the technical demands made by the circuit are nothing new to the sport’s teams and drivers, says Marc Priestly, Formula E technical analyst for ITV.

“There’s always a really great atmosphere at Monaco: the people there really love the street racing. Formula E will offer them a new experience. F1 is so exclusive that many people in Monaco never get to see the racing or the drivers up close. Formula E is a lot more open and accessible. In fact, Monaco shows how the two formulae are at different ends of the scale: it’s one of the most expensive races of the F1 calendar to attend but it’s free for Formula E fans.

Monaco used to be the place that a lot of business was done in F1. Although this has changed in recent years (more of those commercial meetings now take place at tracks in the Middle East and Asia), it is still the place to wow corporate guests. At McLaren, we used to say that, however much you spend on entertaining guests at Monaco, you would always recoup it later on.

All that history and glamour means there will be a lot of business done there for Formula E. The series is at the point where it needs backers, investors and partners lining up for season two. All the teams will have lots of guests, and the eMotion VIP club will be packed. The ink to sign big deals tends to flow a lot more freely on the back of a yacht with champagne to hand!

From a technical viewpoint, F1 considers Monaco a unique event. The track doesn’t suit modern cars so the cars are tailored to suit the circuit like nowhere else. When I was part of the McLaren team, we used to modify the steering rack to get round the hairpin and add extra downforce. The only reason F1 still races there is the glitz, glamour and history.

In Formula E, however, the track isn’t really any different to what the series normally races on. It’s just another street circuit, which is what the cars were designed for. The average lap time will be slower than in F1, because the fast parts of the track (the tunnel and the hill) have been removed, but I don’t think corner speeds will be all that different.

Driver confidence is everything at any street circuit, let alone this modified Monaco track. The fastest lap times come from being as close to the walls as possible. I remember that F1 drivers would come back from practice sessions with the tyre supplier’s name rubbed off the sidewall. If it wasn’t, the driver wasn’t trying hard enough.

Obviously the team does play a role, as the driver needs a car that’s a little more forgiving. That means finding a compliant enough set up that won’t cause the car to snap away from the driver. But as Jack Nicholls told Current E last week, whichever driver gets into the groove the fastest will be best placed to pick up the win.

In Formula E, teams can’t modify parts or bring new components just for Monaco. So what can they do to get the car as comfortable for the driver as possible?

The bump and rebound settings on the dampers can be adjusted to dictate how a car rides over bumps. You don’t want the car so stiff that it leaps off the ground. You want the car to absorb the bumps and keep the tyres in contact with the road surface.

Springs are another consideration. We used to have a whole range of springs in F1 but I’m not sure these can be changed in Formula E. What you can change are the preload settings, which you wind up or down to increase or decrease spring rate. You adjust this because when you come into the hairpin, for example, you stamp on the brakes which moves the load forward. That could completely unload the rear wheels and risk the rear end snapping away. Given the tight schedule of a Formula E race day, I’d be surprised if there were many major adjustments made here.

If you find the car is bottoming out too much, you can tweak the ride height – not much, maybe a couple of millimetres. You want the anti-roll bars, which control how much the car leans, to be relatively soft, to keep the car compliant.

It’s critical not to change too much throughout the day, however. The last thing you want to do is give the driver something new to have to adapt to.

Something teams do need to work on is pit stop times. I’ve been disappointed by the performances there. It’s not uncommon to see teams losing three or four seconds in the pits, which is significant. That’s a lot of time to try and make up on track.

There are a few reasons that I’ve spotted. One is difficulty getting the steering wheel on once the driver is in the second car. There’s a master spline on the steering column that must be lined up with the steering wheel, but you can’t see it under the quick release system. There have been a few occasions when teams have had to cycle the ignition system more than once, too.

The pit stops are quite tricky to follow for fans, in general. Jack and Dario do a great job in the commentary box but there must be an easier way to see what’s going on. In Long Beach, the pit lane was very open so you could see the whole process. If we’re at a track where cars can’t be changed in the pit lane, an alternative might be to put a CCTV camera in each garage and flick over to them when something key is happening.

Who’ll come out on top in Monaco? Qualifying will be very important because it’s hard to overtake in there. Then again, we’ve seen lots of overtaking at places we didn’t think possible at other Formula E tracks, so we’ll see!

Long Beach was brilliant for Piquet – you couldn’t have written a better script. I think Senna has win in him, as does Heidfeld. There are patterns emerging with drivers and teams, though, and I think we’re getting to the point where we’ll see a repeat winner.

My money would be on Sam Bird around Monaco. He’s been very successful there in other series. He likes Monaco. He’s confident there, and Monaco is all about confidence.

Of course, most of the grid will have driven the Monaco F1 circuit at some point in their career, so we could see a much more evenly-matched contest this time around. The fact that it’s hard to pick a clear favourite is brilliant for the sport. It keeps audiences coming back for more.

Whoever takes victory in Monaco this weekend, there will be a lot of kudos that goes with it. The place is very special to people in racing and it will be a very special weekend for Formula E.”