Stewards put Schumacher on last row

Michael Schumacher has lost his provisional pole position from his fastest time in today's qualifying session. The stewards have decided the German deliberately stopped his car at Rascasse to prevent others from setting a faster time. The Ferrari driver sees all his times from qualifying scrapped and is therefore placed at the very back of the grid.

The FIA have issued the following:

"The driver ultimately did so without hitting the barrier on the outside of Turn 18. The engine of the car subsequently stalled, with the result of the car partially blocked the track."

"Having compared all relevant data, the stewards can find no justifiable reason for the driver to have braked with such undue, excessive and unusual pressure at this part of the circuit, and are therefore left with no alternatives but to conclude that the driver deliberately stopped his car on the circuit in the last few minutes of qualifying, at a time at which he had thus far set the fastest laptime."

Immediately after the incident, several drivers including Williams test driver Alex Wurz and world champion Fernando Alonso declared to be "unhappy" with the error and thought such a simple error was unlikely from the well experienced German. As he is now effectively disqualified and moved to the back of the grid in accordance to article 112, Ferrari are unable to appeal to the decision.

"Article 112 enables the stewards to delete any number of a driver's qualifying times for a driving infringement, which decision is not susceptible to appeal," the Statement said. "The stewards accordingly direct that the qualifying times of Michael Schumacher, the driver of car number five, be deleted. The effect of this is that...the driver will start the race from the back of the grid."

Having in mind that Fisichella was penalised for possibly blocking of David Coulthard,
the grid for the 2006 Monaco GP will look as follows: