Racing
© Jonathan Borba
The FIA International Court of Appeal is hearing McLaren and Red Bull’s challenge to the decision that erased Pierre Gasly’s Monaco pit-lane speeding penalties and restored the Alpine driver from seventh to third, with the teams questioning why unserved sanctions can be overturned while penalties already served cannot be undone.
Gasly received two five-second penalties for separate speeding offences in Monaco’s 60kph pit lane. Alpine did not serve either penalty during the race, so 10 seconds were initially added to Gasly’s elapsed time after the finish, dropping him from third on the road to seventh.
Alpine then secured a right of review after an official timekeeping error in the pit-lane-distance calculation emerged. The information had not been available to the stewards when the original penalties were imposed, allowing the case to be reopened. Both penalties were cancelled and Gasly returned to third, moving Isack Hadjar to fourth, Oscar Piastri to fifth, Liam Lawson to sixth and Arvid Lindblad to seventh.
The dispute centers on Piastri’s contrasting situation. The McLaren driver served his five-second pit-lane speeding penalty during the race, while George Russell also served his sanction before receiving a drive-through penalty for serving it incorrectly and eventually finishing 12th. Formula 1’s rules offer no mechanism to reverse the effect of a penalty once it has been served.
Ahead of the closed-door hearing in Paris, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella told media including RacingNews365 that the team had a “double intent.” He said: “The first intent is more general than the interest of McLaren. We think that the process that happened after the race in Monaco is a process that needs to be reviewed because, from fairness for all competitors, the fact that the penalty was removed introduces some significant elements of concern.”
Stella said McLaren wants clarification on the principle behind the review process, beyond the technical questions around calculating the pit limiter. But he also described a direct cost to his team, saying McLaren had been “materially penalised for having served a penalty that is not appealable” and that it “even cost us points in the championship.”
The appeal therefore puts Gasly’s Monaco podium at the center of a wider test for Formula 1: whether the system can permit an unserved penalty to disappear after the race while rivals who served equivalent sanctions remain unable to recover the lost time, positions and championship points.