Apart from the early part of the race Michael Schumacher has just won the easiest race of his career that I can remember.

Coulthard, who was on pole, was forced to start from the back after failing to start on the warm-up lap and Hakkinen who started in third place could only harass Schumacher for about fifteen laps before he retired with a car that was too hard to drive. Before that Hakkinen was definitely keeping pace with Michael Schumacher and it looked as if we had a race on our hands.

Coulthard also proved that had he started from pole he would have had a fair chance of winning. He was consistently faster than Michael, but for most of the time I am comparing, Michael was not under pressure. Coulthard set the fastest lap of the race, proving that his pole position was not a fluke.

The only other two drivers that I felt had any chance (and that was remote) of challenging for the lead were Ralf Schumacher and Montoya, but Montoya crashed on lap 3 while Ralf's car expired with an electrical failure on lap 60, long after he proved that his Williams was just not nimble enough.

Barrichello was not as fast as Schumacher or Hakkinen for the first 15 laps, again showing his tendency to be fast when it does not matter and pedestrian on the day. At least he sounds good.

Michael Schumacher may well have won the race even if all the competitive cars finished - as it turned out he won because there was no one left to challenge him.

Barrichello came second for the same reason and although I was delighted to see a Jaguar on the podium, it was obvious that Irvine would not have made third if it was not for the retirements and misfortunes of faster cars and drivers.

The race was very inconclusive as all races at Monaco always are. The cars are not built to drive on circuits that are this slow and with a barrier or wall always near little mistakes cause big damage and few cars survive the whole race.

Most of the action happened in qualifying. Coulthard looked as if he had to be satisfied with third on the grid right up to his last flying lap when he beat Schumacher by a stunning two tenths of a second. His qualifying time was 2 seconds faster than Schumacher's pole time last year!

Eddie Irvine likes Monaco and is very fast on this track, which he proved by qualifying in 6th (when De La Rosa was 14th) and then finishing on the podium.

Similarly Fisichella in 10th when Button qualified 17th and Alesi 11th with Burti 21st also shows their comfort and ability on this very challenging track. Fisichella unfortunately crashed but Alesi managed to finish 6th, which is not bad for a Prost.

Ferrari did not seem to have the mechanical grip advantage that they displayed in Monaco in past seasons - in fact they looked very stiff and difficult to handle all weekend - so one conclusion that we can come to is that Ferrari are as committed to high downforce aimed at medium to high speed corners as McLaren. But, we already suspected that.

Williams were again fastest in a straight line (or almost straight), showing that high speed advantage that will stand them in good stead for the rest of the season when the really fast circuits come up.

I was somehow surprised that Montoya lasted for two laps only. He has a lot of experience on street circuits (in his CART days) and I thought this might help him in Monaco.

It was a boring race after Hakkinen retired. Michael Schumacher is now 12 points ahead of Coulthard who in turn is 36 points ahead of Hakkinen who has only 4 points. The only McLaren driver that can reasonably win the championship is Coulthard: surely McLaren will now apply team orders to help him.

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