MOTOR SPORT/Monaco Grand Prix: There's something feverishly crazed about Monaco. Formula One's annual date with la-la land throws up a dizzying mix of glamour, power, money and somewhere in the heady brew there's the faintest scent of petrol fumes. In the midst of the Hollywood babel that is Monaco, somebody is, apparently, holding a motor race.

But even that is infected with a delirious storm of rumours, the more outlandish the better. Try this one on for size: Eddie Irvine to buy Jordan.

Deluded as that may seem, the rumour that the former Irish Grand Prix star is about to dive back into the maelstrom as team owner rather than driver was gaining currency in the Monaco paddock yesterday, underpinned by further rumours that the man who took the team off Eddie Jordan's hand, Canadian/Russian tycoon Alex Schnaider, has just now realised that Formula One is a voracious animal, capable of sucking even the richest financial well dry in short order.

Where Irvine fits into the picture is more mysterious.

The 39-year-old has been out of Formula One since being axed by the now-defunct Jaguar team at the end of the 2002 season and after a failed attempt to land a drive at Jordan for the following season bowed out of the sport, only being seen at races as a celebrity spectator rather than a man with an eye on investing in the sport.

And in that capacity Irvine has always resolutely denied any wish to get back into the sport.

And despite having enjoyed an extremely lucrative decade in the sport, Irvine's fortune, while sumptuous, is not even enough to keep a back-marking Formula One team on the grid for a season.

Of course, Irvine, noted for his business acumen as much as his skill behind the wheel, would hardly be foolish enough to invest his own money.

It is possible the Irishman is lining up fellow investors. Just who those might be is information that has not been ground out by the rumour mill. But after just three months in charge at Jordan the Russians are going. Or so it is said.

Of course, this is Monaco, the little land reason forgot. In the shadow of the smallest of Roman Abramovich's yachts and in a corner of the Mediterranean where a team ties itself to the launch of the latest Star Wars film by having its team members dress as the movie's characters, a small leap to the notion that Irvine is desperate to get back into the sport in order to fritter away the fortune it gave him is not unusual.

Reality, though, does intervene, and from two until four on Sunday, the glitz will give way to the grunt and roar of Formula One's drivers as they attempt to take the season's most glittering prize.

Yesterday in preparation for the all-too-brief sporting part of the weekend, championship leader Fernando Alonso staked and early claim for the crucial pole position with the fastest lap in free practice, with McLaren test driver Alex Wurz bouncing back from a massive crash in testing last week to lap within a tenth of a second of the Renault driver and David Coulthard running third for Red Bull Racing.

Conspicuous by their absence were the Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello, the defending champion ending up 11th after mistakes at the chicane and also complaining of mysterious vibrations from his Ferrari and his team-mate settling for 14th. Schumacher said: "In general I was going into the weekend in quite a positive mood and this morning it went very well but then in the second session the car was not 100 per cent right. We don't know what was wrong. There was a vibration but we don't know why. We have to analyse and control everything in detail and find the problem."

The darkest horse in the Monaco pack, however, could be Toyota's Jarno Trulli. The Italian won here last year in a nimble but underpowered Renault. This year on a street circuit that forgives power-lightness in a car Trulli has a Toyota, a car better than last year's Renault and which has propelled him to second in the championship.

Yesterday though, Trulli was strangely subdued in 13th. The aerodynamic modifications Toyota have brought to cope with the twists and turns of Monaco are so far letting the Italian down. If he can get them to work in his favour by tomorrow afternoon, it should come down to shoot-out between him and Alonso for pole, which, in Monaco, where overtaking is nigh on impossible, is the only place to be on Sunday afternoon.