Practice 4: Trulli produces a stunner

Trulli left it late, but his 1m17.429s is 0.001s quicker than last year's pole time set by McLaren's David Coulthard, who was second fastest with a 1m17.506s lap. Juan Pablo Montoya made it three different manufacturers in the top three places, the Colombian a tenth quicker than Williams-BMW team-mate Ralf Schumacher.

This morning's pacesetter Rubens Barrichello was fifth fastest, ahead of Ferrari team-mate Michael Schumacher. Schumacher lost power and crawled into the pits halfway through the session due to an electical problem, and sat out the remaining few minutes staring at the monitors. A chink in Ferrari's seemingly impenetrable armour at last?

Jenson Button was a disappointing seventh quickest in the second Renault, ahead of Giancarlo Fisichella (Jordan) and Heinz-Harald Frentzen (Arrows).

The first casualty of the day was Jordan's Takuma Sato, who whacked the kerb on the apex of Sainte Devote and went straight-on into the tyrewall on the exit, damaging the nose and the front two corners. Jordan only has three chassis in Monaco, so will be anxious to know the extent of the damage. Sato had already visited the escape road at Sainte Devote on the previous lap...

"I feel all right," Sato reported. "I took too much of the kerb as I turned in and went into the barrier."

Kimi Raikkonen then produced a near-carbon copy of Sato's crash, removing the left-front corner of his McLaren at Sainte Devote. Raikkonen had made a similar error at Rascasse on Thursday which wrote-off one of McLaren's five chassis.

By far the heaviest crash of the weekend so far, however, befell Jaguar's Eddie Irvine who suffered a high-speed shunt at the Swimming Pool that removed both rear corners from his R3. Left-rear suspension failure was the cause of the crash.

As soon as the Jag was moved away, Mark Webber crashed his Minardi in almost exactly the same spot, taking off his left-front wheel.

For full practice session 4 results, click here.