I suppose we should have some sympathy and understanding for Michael Schumacher after he qualified third for tomorrow's Monaco Grand Prix. He said that all good things must come to an end and with Michelin's performance here, it seems that the Ferrari/Bridgestone steamroller has been briefly halted.

I hear many of you saying "thank heavens," and I suppose that is the view around the Principality, that hobbling the Prancing Horse is going to make a better race for us all on Sunday. Sure, he's up in third place and teammate Rubens Barrichello isn't far away in fifth, but the next Bridgestone runner is down in 11th place! Michelin are ruling supreme.

Of course, that's in qualifying. All the Bridgestone runners are on softer tyres which may well be affecting their race strategy. Knowing that they are not necessarily going to qualify well might have encouraged them to go for softer tyres for a faster performance in the race itself - but I've got a feeling that the Michelin runners might be on soft tyres too. So the next query is how many stops everyone is going to make?

I can't answer that one, but it is going to be a pretty interesting couple of hours tomorrow. Montoya's margin of four tenths of a second is fairly major although all that might have changed had David Coulthard managed to get a proper final run. One of my colleagues was very upset about that; he had £800 on DC to get pole!

I'm pleased that McLaren are competitive again, but it does seem to be thanks to this circuit and don't expect this situation too often. David was in pretty good form after qualifying, as you can imagine, reflecting on both the frustration last year and his chances of victory.

You had to feel a little bit sorry for DC and others who all seemed to have one name on their lips when complaining of being held up: Felipe Massa. He's kept his nose pretty clean in his debut year but that seems to have gone here. It is his first time, and he's probably not aware just how unpopular he is - but he will be! Among the others who really might have done better are the Renault pairing, while Raikkonen had a rotten time, but much of it was brought on by off-track excursions which tend to be terminal here.

Another who might have done better was Frentzen, but then he was on the 'wrong' tyres today, hence the lowly position. The really extraordinary performance has come from the Toyota pair of Salo and McNish. To get both cars in the top ten on the first occasion a team has even been here is really a good effort, but there are certainly some circuits where they do well and others where they are less good and this one, for Toyota, is one of the best, hopefully not for the same reasoning as it's good for McLaren! (see Friday's column!)

So there are definitely people who should be further up the grid than they are, and we can only hope that they are able to demonstrate that speed tomorrow in the race. But we did have a really classic Monaco race in F3000 with cars dropping out on a regular basis. Usually about 16 cars and drivers finish these races, but today there were only half that number! Expect, therefore, Salo to get in the points and Irvine to finish but probably not in the points. But we should have a genuine battle for the lead!

Oh, and for your amusement, here are some of the banners around being shown around the track: Fangio didn't need team orders (which of course he did), Barrichello - please don't excite me for nothing, and then there's the bumper sticker which some enterprising German has had printed which says ' I don't brake for Schumacher' in three languages, but unfortunately not English!

Here's to a good Monaco Grand Prix!

Bob Constanduros

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