Michelin makes noticeable advance

Juan Pablo Montoya was the only driver to lap under 1m17s and his final qualifying run gave him pole position by a comfortable four-tenths. And the man he demoted was last year's pole man David Coulthard, whose best starting positions with a Michelin-shod McLaren so far this season have been fourth places in Melbourne and Interlagos.

"The car felt good all the way through and we are confident that we should be in good shape with the tyres in the race," said Montoya.

McLaren boss Ron Dennis added: "There is never a time when just one ingredient makes the difference but we have just emerged from three races where Bridgestone has had an advantage. Here it looks as if that has swung to Michelin and I think that's great for F1."

The Ferraris were the only Bridgestone interlopers in the top 10, which included the Toyotas of Mika Salo and Allan McNish.

Salo said: "We clearly have an advantage over Bridgestone this weekend. We did a lot of tyre testing at Ricard last week and they [Michelin] have found something very interesting..."

Salo thinks that the tyre advances are not specific to Monaco and that the Michelin-shod teams should be in good shape at the next few races.