Inside the Monaco Grand Prix ‘Diamond Heist’ 20 years on: How Jaguar’s Ocean’s Twelve publicity stunt led to the disappearance of a £140,000 jewel… and it’s still missing to this day

The glitz and glamor of Monaco, Hollywood movie stars, high-octane racing and a cluster of £140,000 diamonds…

If that sounds like a plot sketch for a blockbuster heist movie, then the truth is actually stranger than fiction.

This weekend the Formula 1 roadshow rolls into Monaco again, 20 years after one of the sport’s most extraordinary mysteries.

It’s the story of how the struggling Jaguar F1 team, with a little help from George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon – and clearly sloppy driving – pulled off the biggest PR coup or disaster of all time.

With the hit film Ocean’s Twelve in production and the Monaco race fast approaching, Jaguar Racing’s communications director Nav Sidhu saw the stars aligning.

His team desperately needed a public relations boost in their fifth F1 season. They had finished seventh in the Constructors’ Championship two years in a row and were well used to the back of the grid as owners Ford tried to cut their losses.

Sidhu had noticed that many Hollywood A-listers enjoyed attending the Grands Prix, but were happy to be on the grid, promoting their own things in interviews and not being fully involved.

So after the huge success of Ocean’s Eleven and knowing that the sequel was in the works, Sidhu came up with a bold plan.

Not only would Jaguar’s cars be renamed for the Monaco weekend to promote the upcoming film, they would also have huge (and real) Steinmetz diamonds mounted on their nose cones during the races.

While the actual Ocean’s Twelve plot featured a precious Faberge egg and no gems, you’re trying to mount one of those on an F1 car.

Each of the diamonds was worth £140,000, about $250,000 at the time. For the promotional photos, they were mounted directly to the car’s body before the race.

For the race itself, however, smaller gemstones – about the size of a button – would be mounted on the nose cone in a metal bezel and the Steinmetz logo.

To maximize publicity, the film’s stars Clooney, Pitt and Damon flew to Monaco and posed for photos in the pit lane with Jaguar drivers Mark Webber and Christian Klien.

No doubt many F1 fans mocked the stunt. The tight street circuit is notorious for jokes and crashes, especially on the first lap, because overtaking opportunities are scarce afterwards.

Placing a diamond on one of the car’s most vulnerable points was asking for trouble. But that was the whole point.

“If there was no danger, there wouldn’t be a story in the first place,” Sidhu said The ride.

“There is nothing interesting about putting a diamond on a car, except in situations where there is a risk to that diamond.”

Sidhu tries to dispel one of the many conspiracy theories about the incident and insists they were real diamonds.

“You’re just not going to find a reputable diamond company in the world that’s going to give you fake diamonds,” he says.

During training, Austrian driver Klien crashed his Jaguar, but the damage was to the rear of the car, leaving the diamond undamaged. But it was a bad omen.

On the very first lap of Sunday’s race, Klien tried to break through the pack from 15th on the grid. He didn’t succeed. – wedged by two Jordans, he smashed into Nick Heidfeld’s car and lost his wing, which was stuck under his front wheels.

Unable to brake, his Jaguar plowed into the tire wall just before the Loews hairpin. The nose cone and diamond buried in rubber, Klien’s first race in Monaco was over in a minute.

“I have to admit that I immediately thought of the diamond,” Sidhu told The Independent after the race.

As marshals in orange hi-vis surrounded the car to collect Klien and the race was yellow flagged, the Jaguar crew were unable to get to their stricken vehicle for two hours.

By then the diamond was gone, never to be seen again.

“Someone here walked away with more than a motorsport souvenir,” Sidhu told The Guardian at the time, but the whodunit never really caught fire.

The most obvious suspects were the marshals who were first on the scene. When they took out the damaged car, it would have been very easy to put the mounted diamond and a piece of carbon fiber in the chaos.

But images of the crash cast doubt on this theory. It suggests that the diamond had already fallen from the car before hitting the barrier, possibly during contact with Heidfeld’s car.

That would put it among the scattered debris from the first-lap clashes, meaning anyone could have picked it up or it could have simply been swept up and thrown away.

‘It’s gone. We have 100,000 people across the track trying to find a crashed car,” Sidhu told The Independent. “I don’t expect us to get it back.”

But it was a bittersweet moment. The publicity stunt and subsequent intrigue after Klein’s crash managed to generate millions of dollars in press for Jaguar and the film.

Steinmetz was relatively unknown in the gemstone world at the time, but their brand gained fame that money couldn’t buy. From a PR perspective, the mission was accomplished.

F1 fans have speculated in the years since Klien crashed on purpose, but that makes little sense if points were a real possibility that weekend.

And why not just drive straight into the wall instead of teasing a bunch of other cars first.

The race was won by Jarno Trulli of Renault, with British driver Jenson Button in second place, an anomaly in a season dominated by Michael Schumacher.

Jaguar would once again finish seventh in the rankings and Ocean’s Twelve received mixed reviews from critics. Maybe staring them in the face was a better plan.