CASINO ROYALE; McLaren gamble and fine driving give Lewis Hamilton an action-packed Monaco win.

Byline: NIGEL ROEBUCK

After Monaco Grand Prix qualifying, McLaren-Mercedes looked to be on its back foot. Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen qualified third and fourth, which was hardly a disgrace, but the Ferraris lined up in first and second, with Felipe Massa once again ahead of world champion Kimi Raikkonen. Since overtaking is virtually impossible at Monaco, the race looked like a Maranello lockout.

But the Cote d'Azur was hardly bathed in sunshine, and the race-weekend forecast was dire. Qualifying ran on a dry track, but rain beat down steadily on race morning. Although it stopped before the race started, it returned periodically throughout the afternoon, and the circuit was never less than treacherous. In those circumstances, anything was possible-and Hamilton conclusively won the Grand Prix.

Only 10 minutes into the race, Hamilton appeared to be out of the running. Following a good start, he trailed Massa but was caught out by a rain shower on lap six. He hit a river of water, slid, clouted a barrier and punctured a tire. As he made his way to the pits, the remains of his right rear tire parted company with the wheel, and he was fortunate that there was no suspension damage.

"I got on the radio, told them what had happened, and they reacted incredibly quickly,'' he said of his team. Indeed, once he rejoined, Hamilton had dropped only from second to fifth.

Help of a different kind was swiftly at hand, too. On lap eight, Fernando Alonso's Renault clipped a barrier, and then Red Bull Racing's David Coulthard skated into a fence; a few seconds later, Sebastien Bourdais' Scuderia Toro Rosso cannoned into the back of Coulthard's car, and that brought out the safety car. Hamilton was fourth on the restart and well in touch with the leaders.

Not long afterward, Massa lost concentration at the first corner and went down the escape road, allowing Robert Kubica's BMW-Sauber into the lead. By now, it was raining hard, and Hamilton, who was on intermediate tires, began to lose time to the leaders. When it began to dry out a bit later, even allowing a visible racing line to emerge around much of the circuit, the race came back to Hamilton. McLaren certainly did not expect him to pit as early as his incident had forced him to, but the team decided to change strategy and to bring him in only once more-to put him, in effect, on a one-stopper.