Grand Prix weekend in Monaco has always been the world’s most theatrical motor racing event — a place where the paddock spills into the harbor, yachts serve as private hospitality suites, and the line between sport and spectacle dissolves completely. But even by the principality’s extravagant standards, what appeared in the marina ahead of the 2026 race stopped people mid-stride.
Parked — if that word even applies — on the deck of the Stella Maris, a 236-foot vessel valued at $75 million, sat two machines that had absolutely no business being on a boat: a Koenigsegg Jesko and an Audi Formula 1 car. Both were craned aboard by Tom Claeren, founder of Ultimate Superyacht, who has made a habit of turning floating real estate into automotive showrooms during race week.
The Jesko — a hypercar that commands somewhere between $2.8 million and $3 million depending on specification — claimed the superyacht’s helipad as its personal podium. The Audi F1 machine, meanwhile, was positioned on the beach club deck at the stern, facing the sea as though contemplating a dramatic exit. Rounding out the display was a sculptural interpretation of a Formula 1 car crafted by French artist Antoine Dulfilho, giving the whole arrangement an almost gallery-like quality.
The Stella Maris itself is no ordinary vessel. It comes complete with a spa, gym, pool, and beach club — the kind of amenities that make extended stays at sea feel less like roughing it and more like a five-star resort that happens to float. Using its open-air spaces as a display platform for a multimillion-dollar hypercar collection was, in retrospect, entirely on brand for a boat of this caliber.
Claeren’s track record with these kinds of stunts is well-established. This wasn’t improvised theater — it was a calculated, logistically complex operation that required coordination between the yacht crew, transportation teams, and automotive handlers. Getting a machine as rare and irreplaceable as a Koenigsegg Jesko onto a moving deck involves a level of planning that most people reserve for, say, launching a business rather than arranging a parking spot.
For Monaco, where race weekend price shocks have drawn growing criticism in recent years, displays like this one occupy a strange dual role. They’re easy to mock as the purest expression of wealth theater — and yet they’re also undeniably part of what makes the event feel unlike anything else on the Formula 1 calendar. The harbor doesn’t just host boats during race week. It hosts an arms race of one-upmanship, and Claeren just fired a significant shot.
The Audi F1 connection adds an extra layer of intrigue. The German marque’s full-scale Formula 1 program is still taking shape, and having a race car displayed in one of the sport’s most photographed locations during its most glamorous event is the kind of ambient marketing that money genuinely cannot buy through traditional channels. Audi isn’t the only manufacturer leveraging F1’s growing cultural footprint — Cadillac has done something similar, using the sport’s expanding audience to reposition its brand identity in real time.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time a yacht has been used as an unconventional venue for an F1 reveal in recent memory. Earlier in the 2026 season, the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls team used a similar floating setting to debut a special one-off livery, with DJ Khaled hosting the event alongside drivers Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad and team leadership. Formula 1’s appetite for spectacle — from Miami to Monaco — shows no signs of slowing, and the sport’s organizers seem perfectly comfortable with it.
For gearheads, the Koenigsegg component alone is worth dwelling on. The Jesko is not merely expensive — it is one of the most technically sophisticated road cars ever built, a machine engineered with a singular obsession for speed and mechanical purity. Placing it on a superyacht deck in Monaco is either a magnificent absurdity or a perfectly logical destination for a car that was always destined to exist in rarified air. Possibly both. Koenigsegg has its own complicated relationship with Monaco’s harbor — a $22 million Koenigsegg One:1 once vanished under murky circumstances, a story that reads like fiction but isn’t.
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Whether you view Claeren’s operation as inspired or excessive probably says more about you than it does about him. Monaco during Grand Prix week has always been the place where motorsport, money, and mythology converge. A Koenigsegg on a helipad, an F1 car by the beach club, and a sculpture completing the trio — it’s absurd, it’s magnificent, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that keeps people talking about this particular stretch of coastline long after the checkered flag drops. If you’re still catching up on why Monaco remains the undisputed crown jewel of the racing calendar, this guide to watching Formula 1 for new fans is a solid place to start. And for a deeper look at the cinematic mythology that surrounds the race itself, Hollywood has already decided Monaco is too good a story not to put on screen.
Source: @tomclaeren Instagram
