Jarno Trulli on his Monaco victory

If you only win one race in your Formula 1 career, it might as well be the Monaco Grand Prix. In the World Championship era, Team Lotus driver Jarno Trulli shares with Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Olivier Panis the distinction of taking his sole F1 triumph on the winding streets of the principality.

Trulli will start his 15th F1 race in Monte Carlo on Sunday and is one of only 41 drivers to have won the classic event since it was inaugurated in 1929. Who better to reveal the secrets of its tortuous twists and turns and explain just what it takes to win the race ahead of the 69th Grand Prix de Monaco.

The Italian has always been rapid around this track, with Heikki Kovalainen last year the only one of his team-mates to outqualify him here. Trulli believes that, first and foremost, success in Monaco is about confidence - both in yourself and the car under you.

"In Monaco, you need to be extremely confident in what you are doing," says the veteran Italian. "You must be extra-precise because you need to use every inch of the circuit and be right at the limit, but not above it. If you go over it, you are in the wall.

You don't have to be brave, as such, but you have to push all of the time knowing that the wall is there. You have to get closer and close to the walls because they mark the limit. And then you have to stay there right on the edge. That's why it's one of the most demanding races mentally."

These qualities are never more vital than in qualifying. Even with the Pirelli rubber used this weekend expected to mix things up, track position remains king in Monaco. A bad Saturday afternoon can make the difference between winning and a 90-minute toil in the midfield.

The foundation of Trulli's 2004 victory was his pole position lap. For all the talk about pole position being cheap in F1 in 2011, it's likely to be the same again this weekend. The Italian flew in the second and, in particular, third sectors of the circuit on a spectacular lap that it still talked about in reverential tones today.

"It was a very special lap," Trulli recalls. "I remember every inch, every single second - not only of that pole lap, but the whole race as well. I was right on the limit every single corner in qualifying because I had the total confidence to be aggressive. I can remember coming hard out of Casino and also going nearly flat through the Swimming Pool to make up time. And I had two great corners out of the hairpin. It all came together.

"I knew that I had to put the car on the front row because that is one of the keys to winning at Monaco. That is where the stress comes in. You just have to be cool and push the car everywhere.

"If I hadn't done that in 2004, I would have lost the chance to win. Yes, my car was competitive, but that doesn't matter if you are not leading. Once you start from the front, only a mechanical failure or a mistake can take it away.

"Looking back, I managed the weekend in a very good way because I dominated qualifying and the race from the first to the last lap. I was also extremely cool because we had several safety car periods. The race was in my hands and it was about either winning or throwing it away. I was totally in the zone and completely in control."

Come the race, it was his Renault team-mate Fernando Alonso that was Trulli's biggest threat, despite Jenson Button putting his BAR second on the grid. While Trulli did have the all-important track position at the start, the 2004 Monaco Grand Prix was a classic example of the kinds of races where pace at critical moments during the inter-pitstop sprints was what counted. So the Italian had to deliver at the key moments. It was a very different race to the kind that we might see on Sunday afternoon.

Trulli held the lead off the line, with Alonso settling into second place. From there, it was a game of cat and mouse. The Italian was due to pit on lap 24, but knew that Alonso was going a lap longer. At the end of the first lap, Trulli's margin at the front was 0.853 seconds, but any chance of stretching that in the early laps was scotched by Giancarlo Fisichella's Sauber rolling after a clash with David Coulthard's McLaren that was triggered by Takuma Sato's Honda engine shrouding the track in smoke. Out came the safety car.

When the race restarted, Alonso briefly threatened an attack and kept Trulli in sight. By lap 14, with 10 laps to go before his pitstop, Trulli was a shade over 2s up the road. That wasn't enough to be absolutely sure of staying ahead. After 19 laps, the gap was only 2.294s and Trulli went on the attack. During the next four laps, he stretched his lead to 4.142s, despite Alonso setting his own personal bests in a bid to hang on.

"I had to push really hard before the pitstop because the team put Fernando on a strategy that was one or two laps longer than me in that race," says Trulli. "That should eventually have allowed him to jump me. But I managed to pull away to have a big enough gap to make my stop."

Trulli dived into the pits, but the most important lap of his race - and possibly of his whole career - was yet to come. With Alonso now leading and on his inlap, Trulli could not afford to waste even a tenth of a second if he was to be sure of retaining the lead.

"When I went out on cold tyres, I had to push hard because I knew Fernando was coming in," says Trulli. "I was over the limit…on the limit. It was like qualifying. I remember going through the Swimming Pool, which is one of my favourite corners. I attacked and had a big moment in the middle of the corner.

"I just managed to get it straight and keep going flat. I can still remember that moment so clearly. That would have been it if I had lost it, but I had to take the chance to win the race and I had to handle it."

Alonso pitted, with Renault turning him around fractionally quicker than Trulli, but the Spaniard re-emerged in second place. The Italian had the lead, but knew that he needed to repeat the trick again at the end of the middle stint of the race.

At the start of the 42nd lap, with Renault gearing up for its second and final round of pitstops, Alonso started the lap just 2s down. In the tunnel, he came upon Ralf Schumacher's Williams, a lap down and struggling with gearbox problems. Knowing that he couldn't afford to squander even 0.1s, he attempted to go around the outside of the German, lost it on the off-line dirt and slammed into the barriers. The race was Trulli's. Any doubt of that was eliminated when Michael Schumacher crashed out behind the safety car.

"To close the gap, Fernando took a lot of risks and ended up crashing trying to overtake Ralf around the outside," recalls Trulli. "After that I pitted.

"Once I had stopped, I had Jenson behind me and we were together in a group under the safety car. I said to myself 'listen, you have been dominating, you are quick. Keep cool, keep the car on track and it will be extremely hard for anyone to overtake you.' I didn’t even have to push. I just had to keep it out of the walls.

"I took no risks and Jenson was there, but he was never close enough to try an overtaking manoeuvre. I didn't pull away, but when you take risks in Monaco, you crash, and I didn't want to throw away a race that I had dominated."

In a way, Trulli's victory was pre-ordained. Since he had first race there in the Formula 3 Grand Prix in 1996, he had been fast. That weekend, he was punted out of the lead by future Minardi F1 racer Esteban Tuero and he had stunned F1 with second on the grid for Jordan in 2000. Again, that race got away with a gearbox problem while he was running second. Heading to the 2004 race, Trulli hadn't even stood on the podium at a track where he was regarded as one of the best - if not the best. In that light, what followed that weekend was no surprise to anyone.

But despite having this special affinity with Monaco, Trulli had never focused on this one-race as the must-win.

"I'm not the kind of guy who wanted to win in Monaco, but not anywhere else," says Trulli, who ironically has done just that in his F1 career. "I just wanted to win races.

"I won in Monaco, I won in style and if you ask me whether I want to change it for Monza or whatever, it doesn't matter to me. It's the way you win, not the race itself. I could have won other races, but I have been extremely unlucky with engine failures, brake failures... So many times I have had the chance but something went wrong.

"Winning in Monza would have been nice, but remember that Italians love Ferrari. In Italy, experience shows that if there is an Italian driver in front of a Ferrari, the crowd cheers the Ferrari."

Monaco 2004 stands – and will likely always stand – as the peak of Trulli's grand prix career. Such was his speed that weekend that you would expect him to cite it as his greatest race. Not so. For Trulli, a much more recent race comes to mind – Suzuka 2009.

You don't remember it? Well, Toyota had already decided to withdraw from F1 and Trulli claimed second place in the Japanese Grand Prix after a tense battle with McLaren's Lewis Hamilton. It was a vintage Trulli weekend, where nothing happened to knock him off his game and, come the race, he was at the maximum of the car lap after lap after lap. It was a race of amazing speed and remarkable consistency and had leader Sebastian Vettel's hit trouble, it would have been a drive worthy of victory.

"People tend to say Monaco was my best race, but I have had others," says Trulli. "The most beautiful and most intense race I can remember, which ended in a good result, was Suzuka.

"The result was only second place, but that was with a Toyota that was competitive, but not a Red Bull. I got ahead of Hamilton and it was a fantastic race. Everyone enjoyed the fight between us because it was qualifying lap after qualifying lap. Nobody knew who was going to finish ahead.

"At the finish, we congratulated each other and knew that we had given everything. Wherever I finish, if I feel that I have got the best out of myself and the car, I am happy. That day, I did.

"The only reason I was unhappy is that [the] second place did not change anything for Toyota. I knew that they had decided in August to pull out of F1, but inside I was trying to get a win in the hope that it would have made them change their mind. They were desperate to win and that win might have made a difference."

But in terms of making a difference, it's Monaco that converted Trulli from just another F1 driver into a winner. But it also signalled his fall from grace as a Renault driver, for team boss Flavio Briatore very much saw Alonso as his number one. By beating him, Trulli had made life very difficult and found himself moved out of the team before the end of the year. He was, astonishingly, too quick to do the job that Renault had cast him for!

Trulli doesn't like to talk too much about what happened. But ask him to comment on the deterioration of his relationship with Briatore and Renault - and his premature departure to Toyota with three races of the season remaining - during the months that followed his day of days and you get only a wry smile.

"Unfortunately," he says, "shit happens."