Don't ask the Williams-Renault team about the rain, which cost it dearly in the Monaco Grand Prix.
Michael Schumacher led from start to finish in his Ferrari in wet conditions, similar to last year's race.Meanwhile, his two biggest rivals, the Williams-Renault pair of Heinz-Harald Frentzen, in the pole position, and Jacques Villeneuve, didn't finish the race.
That cost Villeneuve the lead in the drivers' standings, allowed Ferrari to overtake Williams in the constructors' standings and stopped a three-race Williams-Renault winning streak.
All because it rained and didn't stop.
" We had data telling us that it would dry after 20 or 30 minutes, so we decided to keep the dry setup and the slicks. It started raining more, so the slicks were useless," Villeneuve said.
Schumacher's Ferrari team guessed right.
A half-hour before the race, as the cars went out for a warmup lap to take their place on the starting grid, Schumacher went to the pits immediately to change to a back-up car already with rain settings.
"We had two solutions. One was for the dry and one was for the intermediate one. I just decided in the last seconds to jump in the intermediate," Schumacher said.
It started to rain harder about 10 minutes before the race and the gamble paid off. Schumacher became the first Ferrari winner in Monaco since Villeneuve's late father Gilles won in 1981.
Schumacher's victory allowed him to take the lead in the season standings with 24 points to Villeneuve's 20. He has four wins for Ferrari and 23 in all.
Last year, in similar rain conditions, Schumacher went out in a crash on the first lap.
Frentzen had won the last Grand Prix and Villeneuve the two previous ones.
Frentzen was left at the start by Schumacher, who built a six-second lead by the end of the first lap. By the 15th lap, Schumacher was lapping Villeneuve, who was struggling.
"The car was difficult to drive and at one point before Michael overtook me I hit the guard rail. I continued for a few laps, but the rear of the car was too damaged to go on," Villeneuve said.
By the 18th lap, Villeneuve was out of the race, the second early retirement for the Canadian after two victories.