Schumacher: Everything Went Wrong

Although the Formula One World Champion set the fastest lap, he had little to smile about after another difficult afternoon that saw the German and his Brazilian teammate Rubens Barrichello finish seventh and eighth.

Ferrari's winless streak now stretches to seven races, unheard of since Schumacher joined the Italian team in 1996.

The German, winner of 13 of last year's 18 races, has just 12 points to his credit after six rounds of the Championship and is ninth in the standings, 37 adrift of Renault's Fernando Alonso.

On Sunday his race was effectively wrecked by Minardi's Christijan Albers spinning at the hairpin on lap 25 and blocking the track.

In the bottleneck, Schumacher ran into the back of Briton David Coulthard's Red Bull and had to pit for a new front wing.

"Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong at the start," said the seven-times World Champion.

"It is clear when you look at the times that we had a very competitive race pace. It is a shame that we were not able to get the most out of it. But given everything that happened, I have to be reasonably happy with my two points."

Barrichello lost time when he stalled at a pitstop, collected a drive through penalty for breaking the pitlane speed limit and was then overtaken by Schumacher at the chicane on the final lap.

Technical director Ross Brawn said the result was typical of Monaco, with Schumacher's retirement at the last race in Spain compromising his ability to qualify in a competitive position for a race where overtaking is rarely possible.

"You could see in the middle of the race that our car had huge potential," he said.

"Michael set the fastest lap when he still had a lot of fuel in the car. But this was typical of the type of race you can expect to have at this circuit if you do not qualify well.

"Basically we had to follow other cars and were not able to use our pace. The tyres were perfect for the race but we were not able to qualify well and here we paid heavily for that."