At the Monaco Grand Prix, where James Bond spends a weekend at Bernie’s

Someone once famously described Formula 1 as “a symphony of violence,” and nowhere does the orchestra play louder than in Monaco. For one weekend a year, the Monaco Grand Prix offers a James Bond movie come to life, a tax haven the size of a state fairground dominated by shady linen-suited greasers idly exiting their supercars in front of the casino, and billionaire yacht parties featuring overly friendly “models” imported from Asia. The occasional carbon-fiber shredding is just part of the 450 Euro race-day admission.

No sport celebrates money more thoroughly than F1, and right now, no one has more money than Red Bull Racing, which won everything the last three seasons. Its frightening dynasty has become synonymous with the sport, and has allowed the world's foremost racing series to reinvent itself for modern times. Albert II may be Monaco’s prince, his face towering over the city on building-size photos like a benevolent deity, but on race weekend, Red Bull is its king.

Red Bull Racing’s roots go back to 1996, when F1 legend Jackie Stewart and his son Paul formed Stewart Grand Prix as an ill-conceived ego project. The team muddled along in the middle of the F1 pack for three seasons until Stewart sold the team to Ford, which renamed it Jaguar Racing and properly bollixed it, never winning the podium and never finishing higher than 7th in the Constructor’s Championship. The team’s biggest claim to glory arrived in its final season, when two mechanics won an inflatable donkey in a soft-drink giveaway for a Shrek movie and turned the donkey into an unofficial mascot.

In 2004, Red Bull put Jaguar Racing out of its misery, buying the team for a symbolic dollar in exchange for an agreement to pour $400 million into the business. No one took Red Bull seriously, branding them a “party team," but behind performance began to improve. With the signing of future champion Sebastian Vettel and engineering mastermind Adrian Newey, it began to improve a lot. Using a smoking Renault RS27 V-8 engine in its cars, Red Bull finished second in 2009, and then seized control of its destiny three races into 2010, giving birth to a dynasty.

This season, the team’s name has changed to Infiniti Red Bull Racing, as the sole luxury brand of the Renault-Nissan alliance has invested countless millions to become the “title partner” of the team. It’s going to be a big help, Rob Marshall, the chief designer of the team’s F1 cars, told me. “In the past, we didn’t have a big engineering company backing us,” he said. “We are a soft-drinks manufacturer. It’s not like we could phone up our bosses in Austria and ask them about new materials for X, Y, and zed. But now Infiniti can provide us with information and raw materials. They have an enormous apparatus we can tap into.”

Infiniti is trying to trade the enormous resources of the Renault-Nissan merger for the hope of gaining the imprimatur of global cool. They want to become a leading global luxury car brand, mentioned in the same breath as Mercedes, BMW, and Audi. As Andy Palmer, Infiniti’s executive vice-president told me, “there are plenty of pretenders in luxury, but they ones we covet are the Germans.”

Paradoxically, the only place on Earth where Infiniti has sizable market share, the United States, is also the corner of the globe where F1 is the least popular. Infiniti wants to win over the rest of the world. It has invested countless millions, and countless hours, on the proposition that Formula One will be its launcher.

“If you are just a sponsor,” said Andreas Sigl, Infiniti’s global director of Formula One, “it’s like paying for sex. We are a partner. We offer a lot more than money.”

Infiniti flew two dozen writers, including me, from all over the world to Monaco for the weekend, at considerable expense. They wanted to show off their shiny new F1 bauble, and they did so with great efficiency. But the scene seaside in Monaco showed they’re still living in Red Bull’s world.

Speaking of “paying for sex,” it’s impossible to describe the Monaco Grand Prix without talking about the Red Bull Energy Station, which has become the thumping hub of rich-person favor for the world’s most glamorous sporting weekend. The Energy Station, two stories of white steel and glass, makes an appearance at every European F1 event. But for Monaco, Red Bull adds a “terrace,” with an outdoor bar and comfortable white couches arranged around a pallet of fake grass, and, more impressively, an upstairs outdoor pool deck, with water that they keep crystal clear so you can see the Red Bull logo at the bottom. These components are assembled in Italy and then floated 40 miles down the coast, where they get parked in Monaco Harbor’s prime docking spot, within view of several sections of the track. An invitation to the Energy Station means that you’re the boss, or at least someone the boss deems worthy.

All weekend, the Energy Station was the place to be seen, and also to eat free plates of prosciutto and melon. Celebrities flowed through like semi-premium champagne. After the qualifiying races on Saturday, a staggeringly drunk Jeremy Clarkson blundered around the terrace, blowing wafts of cigarette smoke in people’s faces. One of my colleagues asked to pose for a picture. “In a minute,” he said, but that minute never came, as he chose instead to bear-hug a TV anchor and then stumble off toward a yacht party. Conversely, Michael Douglas, fresh off an acting trophy at Cannes, stopped by for a quiet lunchtime beer. On Sunday morning, David Hasselhoff appeared with a plastic woman, flexing his still-impressive biceps for the photographers. And all around them lounged beautiful men and women in flawlessly pressed clothing, dangling their pampered toes into the waters, looking blase and nonchalant and literally eating cake, barely stirring even as Red Bull stunt bikers and parkour jumpers did flips off the bar. Somehow Red Bull, with its cheap little suppository cans full of liquid crack, has become the ironic epitome of high-flying Cote d’Azur style.

The Energy Station looks even more impressive compared with the hospitality areas of F1’s 11 other racing teams, which sit in a line along the F1 paddock walk, forced to face the Red Bull wealthcraft carrier to remind them of their station. Small groups of employees sat inside, looking as lonely as figures in an Edward Hopper painting. At the very end, the Marussia display was little more than the RV big enough for an opening band on a stadium tour.

Bernie Ecclestone, the all-powerful boss of F1, hands out paddock privileges like candy to his teams, controlling them via access. The more paddock passes you get, the more sponsors you can woo. At the far end of the paddock area, Ecclestone had set up his own modest two-story trailer, shiny black with blacked-out windows to match his black heart, that looked like it hadn’t had a redesign since 1986, much like Eccelstone himself.

One afternoon, as we got a paddock tour, Eccelstone emerged from the trailer, wearing all black, his white hair as disrupted as Andy Warhol’s. He held a sheaf of papers. The Imperial Death March played behind him.

“Hi there, Bernie,” said the Infiniti PR guy who had allowed us access to the secret area.

Eccelstone just mumbled. I felt lucky to escape without a bolt of force lightning.

Later, around midnight, the party gathered its own dark forces at the Energy Center. Men with fauxhawks and deep orange tans stood around the fringes holding drinks, while gaggles of rich moms on holiday danced in circles and took selfies. A sexy Eurasian lady stood on a chair and ground her ivory-colored hot pants toward people’s faces. I was at the party for three hours and the “Ibiza” DJ played "Around The World" twice, and worse, a club remix of "Titanium" once. But this is what high status buys you, a 3 a.m. DJ party with unlimited Singha beer, rosé wine and trays of cocktails spiked with Red Bull.

“Where are the drugs?” I shouted desperately to the editor of a French lifestyle magazine. “I need drugs!”