Pierre Gasly has his Monaco Grand Prix podium back, but the result may not be settled. On Friday at Barcelona, FIA stewards rescinded the two five-second penalties that had dropped the Alpine driver from third to seventh after last Sunday's race — only for McLaren and Red Bull to immediately signal they could challenge the decision.
The reversal hinged on a timekeeping error. Five drivers were penalised for pit-lane speeding in Monaco, an unusually high number that drew suspicion at the time. The stewards' ruling, delivered as Alpine's right of review was heard, laid the blame on the official timing system: "FOM, as Official Timekeeping Supplier to the Competition, provided evidence that the distance used in calculating the F1 Official Timing (and hence the pit lane speed) was inaccurate." FOM later traced the fault to the first timing loop at pit entry, which was shorter than calibrated and caused the system to overestimate car speeds.
For Gasly, the decision closed a painful week. "It sounds really good," he told Sky. "I must say I'm extremely happy for the whole team, very proud of the way they have fought for all of us for that result." He admitted he had "felt very low" on the Sunday night, caught between pride in the drive and a sense of injustice. "I'm very proud of F1, the FIA, for the transparency and everybody recognising their responsibilities in that situation," he said. "Today, it's a massive step forward for our sport."
Not everyone shares that view. Gasly's reinstatement to third demoted Red Bull's Isack Hadjar to fourth and McLaren's Oscar Piastri to fifth, and both teams lodged a notification of intent to appeal within the one-hour window allowed under Article 15.4 of the International Sporting Code — buying themselves a further 96 hours to decide whether to follow through.
In the hearing, Red Bull sporting director Stephen Knowles argued the pit-lane timing process had been consistent all weekend and that teams adjusted their own systems knowing the speed calculation was imperfect. McLaren's Will Courtenay made a similar case against amending the results, even though Piastri was himself one of the penalised drivers. Haas boss Ayao Komatsu went further, noting that the large majority of the 22-car grid had completed the race without falling foul of the limit, which put the onus on teams to leave enough margin.
Piastri, who held fourth on the day before slipping to fifth, said the problem had been obvious from the cockpit. "I think in the race it was reasonably obvious, I thought, that there was something weird going on, because maybe you have one or maybe two cars in the same race to have pit lane speeding penalty, but not seven or eight or however many it was," he said. His wider point was that the damage could not be fully undone: having already served his penalty, he had changed how his own race played out, "so they can't change the result now."
Mercedes are aggrieved for a different reason. George Russell was hit with a pit-lane penalty and then a drive-through for failing to serve it correctly, dropping him out of the points and stretching his title deficit to team-mate Kimi Antonelli to 68 points. Team principal Toto Wolff confirmed he had been "on the phone with our lawyers to look at what we can do for George," while stressing Mercedes would not contest Gasly's result. "We wouldn't appeal the Gasly result, certainly, but we would like the FIA to look at what could be the remedies for George's race," Wolff said. "Definitely something we have a reason to be annoyed."
With FOM vowing to review its procedures for Monaco's unusual pit lane and three teams weighing their next move, the final classification of a race run nearly a week ago remains, remarkably, in flux.
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