Motor Sport Monaco Formula One Grand Prix: The glory of the Monaco Grand Prix has always been its ability to separate the great from the merely good.

On streets normally traversed at walking speed by the wafting super-limousines of the super-rich, a race where an armco barrier is never more than a hair's breadth away from a wheel spinning at upwards of 180mph removes focus from the technological advantages of 1,000 miles of testing and tells you a tale of drivers. Of where the talent truly, deeply lies.

And yesterday, 26 long races after he became Formula One's great white hope with a maiden win at Monza 2001, Juan Pablo Montoya re-established his credential as a driver with the commitment, the focus and the pace to rise above Formula One's sternest challenge and join an elite band of Monaco winners.

It was on these twisting streets in 1998 that Montoya caught the imagination in a blistering F3000 race, which, although not won by the Colombian, was electrified by his daring, aggression and bloody-minded refusal to back off, despite finishing with no front wing and almost on three wheels.

Three years later, after a US Champ Car title and an Indianapolis 500 win, the wunderkind was back, touted as a Schumacher-buster, the future of Formula One. And with a bruising, fearless overtaking move on Schumacher in Brazil two years ago, he fired the imagination further. The Monza win later that season earmarked him as a future champion. And then, nothing.

Or, at least, an unconsummated flirtation with greatness. Seven poles last year yielded no wins. Montoya became the great tease of Formula One. Blessed with outrageous talent but hampered by unflattering machinery and a nagging doubt about his work rate with the team.

And the concerns carried through to this year. The Williams FW25 has been a major disappointment, suffering from a design flaw that sees it shredding tyres and losing any claim to competitiveness against Ferrari.

Throw in a much-publicised spat between the team and BMW, sulking over the shortcomings of a chassis making their engines look lacking, and Montoya again slipped off the radar, replaced as the nascent star by the brilliant Kimi Raikkonen and Renault's Spanish flyer Fernando Alonso.

And such may be the case for the remainder of the season. Williams have been at pains to point out in recent weeks that they have found a major aerodynamic tweak that will revive their fortunes, but the suspicion lingers that the FW25 is cast from a faulty mould. It can be shaped and reshaped but the inherent flaws in its DNA will remain.

Yesterday in Monaco, those coding errors were removed from the equation and the race was not about a workman and his bad tools but about Montoya, the driver, against his rivals on an almost level playing field. A field, admittedly given a final flattening by Williams itself through a well-worked two-stop strategy.

The Colombian stamped his authority from the start, jumping ahead of second-placed Raikkonen to slot in behind team-mate Ralf Schumacher.

With overtaking at a premium, Montoya seemed to cede the advantage to his team-mate as the race's first stint wore on, the gap floating out to two seconds before Montoya struck in advance of the younger Schumacher's pit stop on lap 21. The Colombian closed to within half a second in the pair of laps before his own stop on 23 and blasted past his team-mate in an eight-second halt in pitlane.

Montoya's second stint was about consolidation. With Michael Schumacher having been stuck for too long in fifth behind the slower Renault of Jarno Trulli, Montoya's chief concern was Raikkonen, the dogged championship leader.

The gap ebbed and flowed but never climbed beyond four seconds and then the Williams pit crew struck. On lap 49, Montoya arced into pitlane, halted in front of the Williams garage and, just 6.7 seconds later, was away. Raikkonen, stopping four laps later, reeled off an impressive quartet of sub-one minute and 14 second laps but with an almost nine-second halt in pitlane on lap 53, it wasn't enough to steal the lead.

Montoya remained in charge and despite a nailbiting final handful of laps, in which Raikkonen closed to within four-tenths of a second.

"We really needed this," said Montoya. "It's fantastic, unreal. There were a few races where I was close to a win and I threw it away, like in Australia for example. Winning in Monaco is very special, there is no other race like this in Formula One. It's a bit like winning the Indy 500 in the USA. This is the first time I've finished here since I started racing in F1 and I've won it."

It was Raikkonen who may have been the day's biggest profiteer. With Michael Schumacher third, the Finn extended his championship lead to four points. And with McLaren's new MP4/18 car still due, now scheduled for a Nurburgring debut in a month's time, Raikkonen's championship aspiration look more and more realistic.

Meanwhile, on a day when Michelin had the upper hand, with seven of the top 10 places going to cars shod by the French manufacturer, it was always going to a hard day for Jordan with qualifying places of 12th for Giancarlo Fisichella and 16th for Ralph Firman. And so it proved, Fisichella bringing his EJ13 home in 10th and Firman crossing the line two places further back.

"Everything unfolded to plan for us today and our pit stops were very good but unfortunately our plan wasn't sufficient to score any points," said Jordan engineering boss Gary Anderson.

"I think the fact that almost everybody two-stopped showed our strategy was right, but unfortunately if the speed's not there, there's not much you can do about it during the race. I suppose it's good that we're not taking any debris home, but I'd rather be taking debris and a few points."