By Andrew Benson BBC Sport Online motorsport editor

Ralf Schumacher likens driving a Grand Prix car around Monaco to trying to "fly a helicopter around your bedroom", and his brother Michael believes it is too dangerous for modern Formula One.

The teams constantly complain about excessively cramped and awkward working conditions, and the amount of brazen opulence on show can take your breath away.

And yet, almost in spite of itself, Monaco stands alone as by far the most prestigious and famous event on the F1 calendar - to the point that it has become synonymous with the sport.

It is perceived to encapsulate F1 in a single race, highlighting in extremis the glamour and wealth of the most expensive sport in the world.

Monaco's glamour draws money to Formula One

But in many ways Monaco is an anachronism that has nothing to do with what F1 has become in the modern age.

The facilities are primitive and the track puts both drivers and spectators at a far greater risk than would be acceptable anywhere else in the world.

And getting around the Mediterranean Principality at Grand Prix time is like trying to negotiate a maze.

Monaco is allowed to continue largely because it is the place that everyone wants to come to watch F1 - and that includes the companies who part with millions in sponsorship.

F1's god is Mammon, and he would go hungry without the draw of Monaco.

But F1 without Monaco would be poorer in another way, too, because the event represents something increasingly rare - a true challenge for the best drivers in the world.

Every year we ask ourselves why we continue to race here and every year we decide to come back

Michael Schumacher

The proximity of barriers makes Monaco dangerous

Michael Schumacher says: "Every year we ask ourselves why we continue to race here and every year we decide to come back.

"In many ways, it's a strange thing. Probably, we think it is only one of 17 races on the calendar and that once a year we can take this sort of risk with all the necessary precautions.

"You really have to avoid making any risky moves because the consequences can be serious."

Schumacher enters this year's race chastened by the controversy of being handed victory in the last event in Austria by his Ferrari team-mate Rubens Barrichello.

And yet this weekend will provide the world champion with the opportunity to show just why Ferrari imposed those orders in the first place.

Pedastal

Schumacher is gunning for his sixth win around the streets of Monaco, which would equal the record set by the late, great Ayrton Senna.

Through a combination of talent, bravado, courage and delicacy of touch that no other driver can match, the German has made the event his own since the Senna's death in 1994.

That is why Ferrari pay him $35m a year and devote all their efforts to him.

And it is also the reason that - as long as Monaco allows Schumacher and drivers like him to showcase their talent - its faults will be overlooked, and it will continue to occupy its own pedastal within F1.