The $300,000 diamond lost at an F1 Grand Prix
· BehindLines newsroom
On 23 May 2004, a diamond valued at $300,000 went missing during the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix. Twenty-two years later it has still not been found, BBC Sport recalls in an article published on 13 November 2026.
A publicity stunt
According to the BBC, the Jaguar Racing team was getting mediocre results and its owner, Ford, had decided to pull out of the sport. Communications director Nav Sidhu was looking for a big splash and built on the film "Ocean's Twelve", some scenes of which were being shot in Monte-Carlo. The film's plot centres on the theft of a diamond-encrusted Fabergé egg; Sidhu wanted some sparkle on his cars too.
With the diamond company Steinmetz, the team agreed to fix a 1.4-carat stone, encased in steel, to the nose of both cars, those of Mark Webber and Christian Klien. The stones were delivered by hand to the garages, the BBC says.
The disappearance
According to the BBC, Klien, an Austrian in only his sixth race, was hit by a Jordan on the first lap, which damaged the front of his car, and then slowly hit the barriers at the Loews hairpin. He climbed out unhurt. The car was lifted away by a crane and only came back to the garage once the race was over; when Sidhu was finally able to look, the diamond was gone. The BBC reports that the stone was not insured, according to reports at the time, and that the circuit was handed back to public traffic about an hour after the end of the race.
Sidhu thinks someone picked it up without knowing where it came from, and denies the rumour of a fake diamond. Tony Purnell, then head of the team, also considers that someone may have pocketed it, but also that the stone may have shattered or been swept away with the road surface. In his view, Klien was probably unaware of the stone and simply spoke of a rookie error.
An unexpected publicity coup
Purnell tells the BBC that the media talked only about the jewel, not about Jarno Trulli's victory. He believes this buzz helped the sale of the team to Red Bull six months later.
Why it matters
The story illustrates the role of promotion in F1 and remains, according to the BBC, an unsolved mystery. The BBC does not say where the stone is: what its witnesses offer is hypothesis, not certainty.