The jewel in F1’s crown – the Monte Carlo Grand Prix – is always a peach of a race. OK, so there are no overtaking places, but that never detracts from the action. My money was firmly on Michael Schumacher giving a demonstration drive to an easy victory.

Qualifying proved interesting and action-packed. The surprise of the field was Jarno Trulli who consistently battled with Schumacher for the top spot, but ultimately it was the German who secured first on the grid. Coulthard looked promising but only managed third. With Jordan’s peculiar fuel strategies, David needed to get past Jarno into St Devote on the first lap.

Hakkinen had a diabolical time in qualifying. Almost every run was blocked by accidents. This put him well down the grid. Eddie Irvine managed an impressive fifth. Villeneuve never managed to get much out of the BAR and languished towards the back of the grid.

There were three starts on the Sunday. The first was aborted due to Alexander Wurz stalling the Benetton. After the second start the red flags came out due to a traffic jam at Grand Hotel hairpin (Loews) caused by Button and Verstappen touching.

The third start saw a clean first lap but David hadn’t managed to get past Jarno and had to watch Michael disappear into the distance. Eventually the gearbox gave up on the Jordan – a real shame – and David got through, but Michael was already half a minute up the road.

From then on there wasn’t much in the way of racing. David and Michael traded fastest laps. The field settled down into a rhythm until Monaco started to bite back. Cars started going off the road, mostly at St Devote. It seemed that as soon as you got off line it was not possible to get round the corner. Interestingly no-one tried going down the escape road a la Schumacher ’99. Frentzen went off here in a very odd way. He was setting fastest times towards the end of the race when he was well behind David – why was he pushing so much?

Michael eventually retired due to a suspension failure. This was caused by a broken exhaust forcing the gases onto the suspension and melting it. Up to then it had been a textbook drive. Ralf Schumacher also went off at St Devote, putting a 7cm gash into his leg in the process. This has put him in question for the Canadian Grand Prix.

The final positions were Coulthard, Barichello (terribly dull drive) then Fisichella (wey-hey). Hakkinen? – problems with the brakes meant he had to cruise some of the race.

So what does all this mean? Well, Wurz looks more and more like he’ll be forced out of Benetton at the end of the season (to be replaced by Trulli?). Button had a not bad weekend, but caused the red-flag incident after the second start (probably replaced by Montoya next year and go to Jordan). Other news is that Frentzen may well join Jaguar (to help their German sales), and Hakkinen may take a years sabatical – as Prost did – hopefully to be replaced by big Jacques Villeneuve, then we’d see a challenge to Schumacher’s supremacy!

 See you on the sofa for Canada!  
Tristan.