The Qualifying session started with Verstappen taking the first pole position, but he was quickly beaten by Villeneuve. Mika took pole with -1,139, 20 minutes after start, soon after which his Team Mate, David, had a succesful first fast lap, qualifying for pole too. Rubens, on the other hand, had a bad start and qualified for fifth position on his first run. Schumi waited quite a while before entering the track first time, but didn't get pole. Coulthard improved his pole position with his 2nd try, but was quickly beaten by Mika with -0,072, 33 minutes after session's start. Ralf managed to qualify for 3rd, pushing his older brother one place down the grid ;-)
But Schumi had yet his best lap to drive and took an amazing pole position with -0,326 second improvement, 19 minutes before the session was over. David's third fast lap was unsuccesful, and with 13 minutes left Mika also failed in taking pole from Ferrari. With only two minutes left all the cars came out, but due to traffic only David managed to improve. He took an amazing pole position with -0,201!!! So he'll be starting from front row tomorrow, next to Schumi with Mika behind him, followed by Rubens, Ralf and, surprise-surprise, Irvine (you know, the invisible guy!). The other Finnish driver didn't do too well and had to settle with a 15th place, though in front of his Team Mate, Heidfeld.

Mika's comment after the qualifying: "I’m a bit disappointed because I didn’t get pole position and I think we could have had an all West McLaren Mercedes front row today. We made a few changes to the car for my last run, which obviously didn’t achieve what we wanted and I had a lot of understeer at the Rascasse and was unable to improve my time".

David started the race by staying in the grid when all the cars left for the warm-up lap, which meant that he had to start from grid 22, the poor guy. He might not be the guy to win the Championship, but he sure did deserve his pole position, and this was of course just a warning sign of what to expect from McLaren today in Monaco. It's really silly to get one's hope up, but it was difficult not to when Mika had a good start, keeping his 2nd place behind Schumi, and no accidents accured during the start (unlike last year when we saw a re-start!). Mika set the fastest lap in lap7, and all looked good for our Flying Finn. Rubens, Ralf and Montoya followed the two leading cars, but Montoya came too fast in one corner and crashed into the wall already in lap 3 :-( Not as fast as Heidfeld, though, who crashed and retired already during the first lap!
Burti went to fix his car in lap 3, and just around lap 13 or 14, Mika Häkkinen was passed by both Rubens and Ralf, clearly having car problems. He went into the pit, and the Team was practically just starring at each other, not knowing what the hell to do. Mika returned to the track, but only to test the fixings, which weren't good enough, so he went back into the pit and finally had to retire completely. In the following lap we saw the other Finnish driver, Kimi, also having car problems. He managed to continue after a long pit stop fixing, but was over 4 laps behind Schumi already! *sigh*
Mika Häkkinen might be tight down by a bad Team and even worse car, but Schumi is also the luckiest man alive. In lap 27 he overlapped David, who was stuck behind Bernoldi for half a race!!!
The rest of the race was pretty event-less. Trulli was literally on fire in lap 31and Ralf had to retire in lap 59 due to car problems, but other than that I can't really say anything interesting about this race. It was a great disappointment, as the entire season has been so far. McLaren still hasn't got their act together, and it's too late for them to win the Constructors' Championship in my opinion. That race is long gone. Mika's Championship is also lost, and David doesn't stand a chance against Schumi. So why watch Formula anymore this summer...?
Schumi's pit stop many laps before any of the other drivers in the lead proved my suspession. It's no secret that Schumi isn't good at starting, so Ferrari always choose to give him less gas when he has to start side by side with McLaren, and not from pole. Well, the lucky bastard won the race without any challenges from anyone, his Team Mate coming in second, his old Team Mate, Irvine, the green skirt chasing devil, coming in third (Jaguar on podium first time ever!). David passed a few cars during the race, and the rest in front of him retired, so he finished on a good

Mika's comment after the race: "I made a good start and was close behind Michael when all of a sudden the car just started pulling to the right. I went into the pits but the crew couldn’t find anything wrong immediately and we decided to go back out. However the car was still behaving in a strange manner, and I decided that it would be impossible to go flat out and there was no other option than to retire. We are not sure what the problem was but I know that I didn’t hit anything and I’m sure the engineers will find out very soon".

An interesting fact: Monaco's famous street circuit is not only the shortest track but also the slowest.

Map of Monaco's circuit