Mark Webber says Monaco Grand Prix qualifying was 'Michael Schumacher's day' as former champion loses pole to penalty

Webber will start from first place on Sunday despite finishing in second place in qualifying in Monte Carlo.

Mercedes driver Schumacher was quickest, but will drop five places on the grid for having caused a collision in the previous race at Barcelona.

A delighted Webber welcomed the result, but conceded Schumacher had been better.

"It is Michael's day," said Webber. "A good lap from him. It was a tight session and lots of different people arrived at the back end of qualifying with different situations with tyres.

"I knew I was aiming for the first few rows for sure - and it came tight. The first run in Q3 was not too bad, and I thought I could go for pole. It was a pretty good lap and I'm happy with it. It's a very good position to be starting tomorrow. We have a very good car. The guys have done a good job and I am very, very happy."

The Australian said it was tricky to think of better ways to punish a driver that is out of a race other than using grid penalties like the one Schumacher was given.

"After qualifying I thought I had a penalty as my engineer said 'great lap and blah, blah, blah, penalty' - and I didn't know what I had done," said Webber.

"When you have an incident in the grand prix that is always a tricky thing. When incidents happen apart from fines what else can you do? How do you enforce regulations on driver behaviour or team behaviour after that?"

Webber admitted Saturday's race is hard to predict given it will be the first time the super softs tyres are raced this season.

"Everyone is in the same boat. We don't have a huge amount of experience with super soft in long runs. Everyone is in ball park I would imagine."

When asked if he could use a one-stop strategy in the race, he said: "In 24 hours we will see."