Pastor Maldonado repeated his Monaco Renault World Series race win of 2006 in this year’s GP2 race.
The Venezuelan comfortably took pole from Giorgio Pantano by 0.3s and led the Italian home in the race as well.
Behind them came the championship top three – Timo Glock, Luca Fillipi and Lucas di Grassi.
Glock fought through from eighth on the grid and an early pit stop helped him gain three places. He spent the early portion of the race stuck behind the impressive Sebastian Buemi who was substituting for Michael Ammermuller at ART.
Nicolas Lapierre might have been less impressed with the Swiss, who nudged him out of the race at Rascasse.
F3 Euroseries regular Buemi finished seventh on his GP2 debut at the tough circuit, behind Vitaly Petrov and ahead of Antonio Pizzonia.
