Monaco's all-time top 10 qualifiers

Starting position has always been critical at Monaco, a track where merely being faster than someone in race conditions has never been a guarantee of being able to overtake.

Since 1933, the grid order has been dictated by practice speed (before that, it was drawn by ballot), and some drivers have often been able to pull a great lap out of the bag when they really needed to.

Here are 10 of the best qualifiers around the streets of Monaco. Some of the names might surprise you, with one of the event's greatest winners not even making the list!

10 Jarno Trulli

His 2004 pole position lap is the stuff of legend. Throughout practice, he had been quick, but far from quickest, in the first sector, so he knew that the real work would be done largely during the second half of the lap.

In sector three in particular, he was searingly fast, earning himself pole position ahead of Jenson Button by close to 0.5 seconds. But while that was his only pole position in the Principality, it is not rare for him to star on Saturdays.

Since his first visit for the Monaco F3 race in 1996, he has been beaten only once in qualifying by a team-mate - by Heikki Kovalainen last year. In 1998 and 1999, he put Prost machinery far higher up the grid than it had any right to be and, a year later, stuck a Jordan on the front row.

Prost's best pole came in 1986 for McLaren © LAT

9 Alain Prost

Amid all of the talk about the Frenchman being gifted victory at Toleman driver Ayrton Senna's expense in 1984, and his struggles to get anywhere near the mercurial Brazilian at Monaco when they were McLaren team-mates, it's easy to forget how good Prost could be at Monaco.

He claimed four pole positions there, in 1983, 1984, 1986 and 1993 and during the first half of his grand prix career was as impressive as anyone on the streets.

His 1986 pole position was arguably his best, coming at the wheel of a McLaren-TAG that didn't have the pace of the Williams-Hondas. He also outpaced his team-mate Keke Rosberg, a former Monaco winner, by an amazing 2s.

Caracciola was on pole twice at Monaco © LAT

8 Rudolf Caracciola

In 1933, Caracciola suffered a brake failure heading into Tabac corner and sent his Alfa Romeo 8C hard into the barriers.

He suffered multiple fractures to his right leg and was out of racing for the rest of the year. The accident affected him for the rest of his career, leaving him with an obvious limp.

He returned to racing in 1934, but it wasn't until 1935 that he returned to Monaco, putting his Mercedes W25 on pole ahead of his team-mates Manfred von Brauchitsch and Luigi Fagioli. It wasn't an incredible lap in itself - after all, von Brauchitsch had never driven at Monaco before - but in the context it was a great performance.

Caracciola also took pole position in 1937, a year after his sole victory at Monaco.

The 1996 Ferrari was not an agile car © LAT

7 Michael Schumacher

Although he won five times on the streets of Monaco, Schumacher's qualifying record isn't as astonishing as you would expect, with 'only' three pole positions.

But for all that, and the shame of what he did at Rascasse during qualifying in 2006, his pole position lap 10 years earlier stands as one of the greatest of all time.

Driving the ungainly Ferrari F310, not the car of choice around the twists and turns of Monaco, he was 0.2s down on Damon Hill at the chicane. What followed was an incredible sequence of corners, a full 0.7s faster than the Williams driver to take pole by 0.5s. Things didn't go quite so well in a wet race, as Schumacher lost the lead to Hill off the line and then crashed out at the right-hander after the hairpin on the first lap!

He also took pole position in 1994 and 2000.

Clark dominated in 1963, but did not win © LAT

6 Jim Clark

While Graham Hill's five victories made him the master of Monaco during the 1960s, old rival Jim Clark was the faster driver around the streets.

Astonishingly, Clark never won at Monaco. What's more, he never even finished in the top three. But this was categorically not because he wanted for speed. On pole from 1962-1964, and again in 1966, he led a total of 97 laps in his six grands prix there but was only running at the finish once, despite being a classified non-runner on several occasions.

Worst of all was the 1963 race, where Clark was on pole by 0.7s ahead of Hill's BRM and was leading after 78 laps, only for a gearbox problem to rob him of victory.

1973 marked Stewart's fourth Monaco pole © LAT

5 Jackie Stewart

Over a five-year period, the Scot was almost unbeatable over a lap in Monaco. From 1969-1973, the three-time world champion was on pole four times.

Stewart's driving was an object lesson in how to drive the track. His smoothness and precision belied how aggressive he could be, carrying tremendous speed through corners while rarely looking like there was any danger he would find the barrier.

After winning for BRM - albeit not from pole position - on his second visit in 1966, it took a while for the second win to come, but in 1971 and 1973 particularly, no-one could hold a candle to Stewart at Monaco.

Moss rounds the Station hairpin in 1960 © LAT

4 Stirling Moss

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Stirling Moss owned Monaco. From 1959-1961, he had a stranglehold on pole and would surely have won more grands prix here than the three he did take but for car problems.

In 1959, he was able to outpace that year's world champion, Jack Brabham, in near-identical machinery, with only the gearbox weakness of the customer Cooper costing him in the race. A year later, he took the first victory for a Lotus at Monaco, although his stunning performance in the race overshadowed a nonetheless impressive pole.

On his final appearance at Monaco before his career-ending accident at Goodwood, he dominated from pole position again, proving beyond doubt that he was one of the greatest drivers in motor-racing history.

Fangio's 1950 pole was the first of four © LAT

3 Juan Manuel Fangio

The Argentinian maestro was the master of qualifying in the early days of the World Championship, taking pole on his first visit to the track in 1950 by 2.6s ahead of 1948 grand prix winner Giuseppe Farina.

He had a monopoly on pole at Monaco during middle of the decade, locking out top qualifying spot from 1955-1957.

He retired from racing before the 1958 race, giving him a perfect record in World Championship races at Monaco of four pole positions from four appearances.

Villeneuve wasn't on pole in 1981, but he was very, very close © LAT

2 Gilles Villeneuve

The Canadian only contested four Monaco Grands Prix during his all-too-brief F1 career, and remarkably he never even claimed pole position there. But his 1981 lap was only 0.078s off Nelson Piquet's far quicker (and lighter) Brabham in the Ferrari 126CK - definitely not the car of choice at Monaco.

To put his achievement into context, his team-mate Didier Pironi - poleman a year earlier - would not even have qualified had he had been 0.2s slower.

Villeneuve went on to take a great victory, cementing his status as a Monaco legend.

Senna remains the king of qualifying at Monaco with five poles. 1988 was his best © LAT

1 Ayrton Senna

To call Ayrton Senna a one-lap genius at Monaco is to make one of the most obvious and repetitive statements possible in F1. Like many cliches, it is rooted in fact. In 10 attempts at Monaco, he claimed five poles.

Most famous is his so-called "out of body" lap in 1988. He outpaced Alain Prost - no Monaco slowcoach - by an incredible 1.427s. A year later, he repeated the trick, taking pole position by 1.148s to become the only driver to take F1 pole in Monaco by more than 1s on two occasions.

He won the race six times, including against-the-odds victories in McLarens that were good, but not great, in 1992 and 1993. But it was for his single-laps that he is best remembered, so much so that his average edge over his team-mate in qualifying was 1.902s, with only Johnny Cecotto (at Toleman in 1984) and Gerhard Berger (at Mclaren in 1992) getting within 1s of him.