FORMUAL 1: Monaco throws curve balls. On a calendar of increasingly uniform, anodyne circuits, the streets of Monaco are a pitching, swerving, unreadable brain-teaser. It's a pinata of a race.

You can make all the predictions you like, but until the walls have been smacked by enough challengers you just don't know what's going to come out. A plastic ring or a multi-faceted jewel. Yesterday, it was the latter.

Jarno Trulli was the first gift to spill out. After the dust had cleared from the first smack of the day, when Giancarlo Fisichella's Sauber pirouetted over the back of David Coulthard's McLaren and through the smoke from Takuma Sato's blown engine, Trulli nailed down his maiden grand prix win with a faultless drive of flashing spirit and technical excellence.

Sure, some nodded wisely, Trulli always had the car for this kind of win. His Renault, blessed with the poise and grace of a ballerina, and burdened by the same's lack of brute force, never had enough to challenge at circuits like Imola or Barcelona but on these tortuous little back roads grace would do nicely thanks. But wait, he's fantastically quick over a single lap but the Italian has never been reckoned a winner. His head isn't right. He's either in the clouds or in the wall.

Yesterday, he proved that wrong, faultlessly translating his blitzkrieg pole-winning lap of Saturday into 77 racing laps in which he never looked like being beaten. Even when Michael Schumacher staged a mid-race surge from fifth place to third on the back of four successive and simply staggering fastest laps, we never felt Trulli was in danger.

On Saturday Trulli had been brazenly confident, saying he was "simply flying, much faster than anyone else out there" and yesterday he replicated that form. He was untouchable - even when Button closed to within half a second on the final lap and Zsolt Baumgartner's leaden Minardi provided a possible spectre at the feast. He brushed the Hungarian aside and strode on to victory.

"It was down to me, honestly," he said. "When I wanted I just responded to the quickest lap time. I was just handling the race. He (Button) closed the gap but he couldn't get close enough to overtake, everything was under control.

"It's an amazing moment for me. I drove a perfect race, leading from the beginning. Even with Michael on the track I would have won anyway."

Button sprang from the gift box beside the Italian, a confirmation of BAR's status as challengers general to Ferrari. In mid-race, though, it looked like he would collapse under Schumacher's pre-pit-stop onslaught but the Englishman bit back, pitting during a second safety-car spell - caused by an accident to Fernando Alonso in the tunnel - and resuming his charge to second, his fourth podium of the year.

And then there was the ultimate surprise. Lap 42, Ferrari opt not to pit as the rest fill up while Alonso's wrecked Renault is removed from the tunnel. Michael Schumacher takes the lead but while Trulli and Button can now run to the finish Schumacher will need to stop again.

But even as heads were being scratched at Ferrari's apparent tactical error, Monaco was preparing to pitch another hopelessly unreturnable ball.

Following the safety car, with Williams's Juan Pablo Montoya shadowing him, Schumacher disappeared into the gloom of the tunnel. When he emerged seconds later his Ferrari was a casualty, the left front dangling by the threads of a shattered suspension, limping to the pits after a collision with Montoya.

And right at the end another almost unnoticed boon. As Trulli flashed across the line ahead of Button and third-placed Rubens Barrichello, farther back Nick Heidfeld was caressing his fragile Jordan towards the line, in seventh place, for two points, Jordan's first of the year.

No Michael Schumacher on the podium. Jordan in the points. The shape of things to come or a single downward spike on the chart that is likely to be Schumacher's untrammelled progress to a seventh title?

After the curve balls of yesterday, Formula One hostilities will recommence next weekend at the flat, bleak expanse of the Nurburgring. For Schumacher it's likely to be a straight-down-the-plate no-brainer.

Yesterday, Monaco handed out gems with abandon. Next week is likely to be another plastic ring.