The 63rd Monaco Grand Prix has so far been what can only be described as ‘character-building’ for Panasonic Toyota Racing. After the first qualifying session Jarno Trulli, last year’s pole position man and race winner, is seventh fastest while Ralf Schumacher faces a frustrating race after crashing at the fast Tabac left-hander coming onto the harbour front.

For Schumacher the weekend has gone from bad to worse. The bad luck started on Thursday when it was discovered that one of the tyres supplied to the team was missing an identification mark and was swapped by Michelin without the appropriate notice being given to the FIA technical director. The replaced tyre was of the same batch and type and did not introduce any change in performance, on what was a free practice day, but with Article 75d of the sporting regulations breached, the race stewards declared that Schumacher would have 0.5s added to his aggregate qualifying time.

The Monaco Grand Prix, more than any other, is all about qualifying position and so Schumacher could not really have been dealt a heavier blow for an error over which he carried no blame. Tyre supplier Michelin, in fact, put out a statement accepting responsibility and apologising to the team and to Ralf.

With the cars looking competitive in Saturday morning free practice, Schumacher then got himself innocently involved in a tangle with David Coulthard and Jacques Villeneuve after he was boxed in behind a slow Juan Pablo Montoya, which gave the team a repair job to do over the lunch break.

Then, with both TF105s well placed to challenge in the all-important first qualifying session, Schumacher had his accident at Tabac.

“There was no problem with the car after the incident in the morning,” Ralf reported. “I was just pushing hard and I clipped the barrier on the inside going into Tabac. That fired the car across the track into the barrier on the outside and it was quite a big impact.”

The qualifying session was red-flagged while the debris, oil and water from Ralf’s accident were cleared off the track, but it was Trulli’s misfortune to be the next car to run after the interruption.

“It didn’t help in more ways than one,” Jarno explained. “First of all the track temperature dropped during the delay and then the track was still quite dusty and dirty around where Ralf crashed. That made it difficult to keep the tyres clean on my warm-up lap and it all added up to a slower qualifying time (1m15.189s) than I was expecting.”

Provisional pole position was claimed by Barcelona winner Kimi Raikkonen and West McLaren Mercedes with a lap in 1m13.644s. Championship leader Fernando Alonso’s Mild Seven Renault (1m14.125s) was second quickest, ahead of Mark Webber (1m14.584s) in the first of the BMW Williams F1 Team cars. Giancarlo Fisichella (1m14.783s) was fourth fastest with the second Renault, ahead of Juan Pablo Montoya’s McLaren Mercedes (1m14.858s) and Nick Heidfeld’s BMW Williams (1m15.128s).

Chief race engineer Dieter Gass summed up Panasonic Toyota Racing’s day: “We have certainly had more than our share of misfortune to contend with. Monaco punishes the slightest mistake very severely and Ralf will face a tough race starting a long way back after his accident. We will have to have to examine the car closely to see if it is repairable.

“The circumstances were also unfortunate for Jarno but there is only 0.4s separating him from the top four with tomorrow’s race fuel qualifying session remaining. We have a hard task ahead but Monaco is an unpredictable race and we will be doing our best to achieve the strongest finish we can and add to the 40 constructors championship points that we have already scored in the first five races of the season.”