"The car and the tyres behaved very well today. We made quite a lot of changes throughout the morning sessions and during qualifying as well and clearly we worked in the right direction," Montoya beamed in a press release.

"I knew the time was there from the beginning, anyway. I had a negative weekend here last year but this time things have been working all right so far and I am changing my mind about this track now. It is definitely pretty special to be on pole here, by four tenths, because getting a good lap together on this circuit is very difficult. I expect the tyres to be consistent also throughout tomorrow's race."

Ralf Schumacher will start from the second row of the grid in fourth place, alongside his Ferrari driving brother Michael. He was one of the contenders for pole until the very the end of the session.

"Unluckily on my first flying lap I was held up by an Arrows. Both the other runs were trouble-free," he said. "I could have for sure improved a bit if in my last run I hadn't been again held up by some traffic. We had no technical problems at all. It is clear that our tyre supplier here provides much better tyres than their competitors. Congratulations to my team mate!"

Chief operations engineer Sam Michael added: "This was a fantastic effort by Juan and also a good job from Ralf. The engineers and the drivers worked hard on the set up all weekend. To Michelin's credit it must be said that they have brought to Monaco good tyres, which look strong for the race as well. Also it is positive to see our car on pole on a circuit which rewards downforce and mechanical grip. Now we will concentrate on the race set up in order to get the most out of our good qualifying positions."