Gasly's Monaco Podium Finish Reinstated
Pierre Gasly has regained third place in the Monaco Grand Prix following a successful appeal by his Alpine team against a pit-lane speeding penalty.
Initially, Gasly was demoted to seventh place after the race due to a five-second penalty for exceeding the pit lane speed limit by 0.1 km/h. He was among five drivers penalised for this infraction during the race, an unusually high number.
Appeal and Review Process
Alpine requested a 'right of review' hearing, which revealed that cars could legally travel a shorter distance in the pit lane than the officials had used in their calculations. The stewards accepted Alpine's argument, supported by data, that Gasly had not exceeded the 60 km/h speed limit.
This decision resulted in Gasly being awarded an additional nine points from the Monaco Grand Prix, moving him up from 10th to eighth in the drivers' championship standings.
Impact on Other Drivers
The ruling was a setback for Mercedes driver George Russell, who received a drive-through penalty for pit-lane speeding. This penalty dropped him from third place at the time to 13th at the finish.
Russell's Mercedes team, along with the teams of the other penalised drivers, did not contest the decisions despite believing their drivers had not breached the speed limit.
Gasly was recorded as committing two 'offences'. The other drivers penalised, in addition to Russell, were McLaren's Oscar Piastri, Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton, and Gasly's teammate Franco Colapinto.
Hamilton's penalty did not affect his second-place finish, as Ferrari managed to serve it during a safety-car period without losing track position. Piastri, who dropped to fifth following Gasly's reinstatement, lost three places while serving his penalty.
Stewards' Findings
The stewards' verdict, published after the right of review hearing, indicated that they began questioning the number of speeding penalties after the third was issued.
"Race control promptly came back to the stewards stating it had made enquiries of the official timekeepers and was told that there was no issue and that the data was therefore accurate."
The pit-lane speed limit is monitored using a series of timing loops measuring the time taken to cover a specific distance along the pit lane.
The report noted that modifications to the pit lane this year resulted in the shortest possible route between the timing loops being 77 centimetres shorter than the distance used to calculate the speed limit.
Five of the six offences involved cars calculated to be exceeding the limit by 0.1 km/h, while one was 0.4 km/h over.
Consequently, the stewards concluded that Gasly had not breached the pit-lane speed limit.
