fifth. Prost reacted by calling Alesi into the pit lane on the next lap for new tyres to better his defence of fifth. However, Alesi was delayed and he rejoined the race behind Coulthard in sixth. Michael Schumacher led the last nine laps to take his fourth victory of the season and the 48th of his career, by 0.431 seconds over Barrichello in a staged finish. Irvine took Jaguar's first podium in third, ahead of the faster Villeneuve in fourth. Coulthard finished a lap behind in fifth, being approximately a minute behind Villeneuve, and Alesi took sixth. Button took seventh after coping with an understeer which developed into an oversteer and could not draw closer to Alesi, who was 28 seconds ahead of him at the finish. Verstappen and Bernoldi followed in positions eight to nine. Räikkönen was five laps down and the last finisher in tenth after an early race pit stop to rectify a wheel sensor failure and he had no traction control. The attrition rate was high with 12 of the 22 drivers not finishing the race. Post-race The top three drivers appeared in Prince Rainier III of Monaco's royal box to collect their trophies and appeared in the subsequent press conference to speak to the media. Michael Schumacher said he felt little emotion on the podium because he took "a very straightforward win" and that finishing the race was the most important aspect because of the circuit's narrow characteristic, "Although it was an easy drive, it was still hard to some degree, because we were still doing reasonably fast lap times. I don't know what it so special." Barrichello stated his cramp disappeared after his pit stop, "I was asking God to give me a chance to race because the car was brilliant. I never had a car as good as this one of today. But as Michael was saying, I had to save so much because I couldn't do anything else." Irvine spoke of his delight to finish third and stated his hope to continue Jaguar's form into the , "It's good for all the guys in the team. Everyone's been working very hard. We haven't been getting very far to be honest until these new aerodynamics arrived on Saturday so it's good for the guys in factory." Bernoldi, who battled Coulthard for 35 laps, alleged that the McLaren team principal Ron Dennis and the