Panasonic Toyota Racing endured a frustrating Monaco Grand Prix as Jarno Trulli took the chequered flag in 15th position, one place and 0.9 seconds ahead of team-mate Ralf Schumacher after a race to forget for the team. A difficult qualifying session left Jarno in 14th and Ralf in 20th on the grid, giving both drivers an uphill task in the 78-lap race.

That task became harder when they lost ground at the start on the run into St Devote, with Ralf dropping to 22nd and Jarno to 18th. However, Jarno was overtaken illegally by Takuma Sato in the hectic first corner and took back that position soon after. As is traditional at Monaco, traffic proved to be a problem and both drivers found it difficult to improve their positions despite setting some competitive lap times in clean air.

The team opted for one-stop strategies and Jarno was first into the pits on lap 47 to switch to the super soft Bridgestones, with Ralf following suit two laps later before a clean run to the chequered flag. Toyota's next engagement is the Canadian Grand Prix in two weeks for the first race of a North American double-header.

Ralf Schumacher: It was just stuck in traffic in the first laps. That made the race very difficult from then on. The pace was not too bad when you compare it with the others when I was on a clear track. I lost a lot of time stuck in that position as you could see from my lap times when I had a clear track in front of me. The balance was actually quite okay later on and I was able to push a bit harder. We could clearly have been fighting for points today for sure if we had qualified better. Qualifying was really where our race was decided but I will try hard to get that right and hope for better next time."

Tsutomu Tomita - Team Principal: "To be honest before coming to Monaco we had very strong confidence about our competitiveness and on Thursday we were actually competitive. I thought it was very promising for the race but on Saturday in practice we were struggling and in the afternoon in qualifying it was a bit of a disaster for us honestly. We lost many, many positions to slip to 14th and 20th. From then we could do nothing about the race."

"Jarno's race was over really very quickly when the engine almost stalled at the start and he was passed by many cars. Ralf also got passed by a few cars at the start and it is just impossible to overtake here. Therefore from this point of view the two drivers fought very well today but we could do nothing. The very important thing to learn right now is to bring the best performance of the car to the race and we will challenge again to do that in Canada."

Race Results

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time
1	F. Alonso	McLaren	1:40:29.329
2	L. Hamilton	McLaren	+ 4.095
3	F. Massa	Ferrari	+ 1:09.114
4	G. Fisichella	Renault	+ 1 laps
5	R. Kubica	BMW	+ 1 laps
6	N. Heidfeld	BMW	+ 1 laps
7	A. Wurz	Williams	+ 1 laps
8	K. Räikkönen	Ferrari	+ 1 laps
9	S. Speed	Scuderia Toro Rosso	+ 1 laps
10	R. Barrichello	Honda	+ 1 laps
11	J. Button	Honda	+ 1 laps
12	N. Rosberg	Williams	+ 1 laps
13	H. Kovalainen	Renault	+ 1 laps
14	D. Coulthard	Red Bull	+ 2 laps
15	J. Trulli	Toyota	+ 2 laps
16	R. Schumacher	Toyota	+ 2 laps
17	T. Sato	Super Aguri	+ 2 laps
18	A. Davidson	Super Aguri	+ 2 laps
Did not finish
19	C. Albers	Spyker F1	+ 7 laps
20	A. Sutil	Spyker F1	+ 25 laps
21	M. Webber	Red Bull	+ 59 laps
22	V. Liuzzi	Scuderia Toro Rosso	+ 77 laps