Alpine succeeds in getting Gasly’s Monaco penalties reviewed

Alpine has succeeded in its request to review the penalties given to Pierre Gasly in the Monaco Grand Prix, after an acknowledgment that the distance used in calculating the pit lane speed was inaccurate.

Gasly was handed two separate five-second time penalties in Monaco for speeding in the pit lane – one of six occasions a driver was deemed to be over the limit – and was demoted from third place to seventh in the race classification. Alpine submitted a petition for a right to review Gasly’s penalties on Sunday night, with the hearing taking place today ahead of this weekend's Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, to decide whether a significant and relevant new element exists that was not available to the stewards at the time of the original decisions.

Alpine argued there were four matters that met this criteria:

1. That the FIA and FOM, but not the race stewards, were aware in advance of the race that there was an issue with the timing loops in the pit lane
2. That Alpine had data with demonstrated that the driver of car No. 10 (Gasly) activated the pit lane speed limiter in advance of entry into the pit land and did not exceed the pit lane speed limit
3. A witness statement from Gasly that he took a cautious approach before entering the pit lane, having been warned by his engineers
4. 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 and overestimated the speed of car No. 10

The FIA and FOM strongly refuted that they had advanced awareness as claimed in the first point, with FOM reassuring race control that there were no issues after concerns were raised due to the number of infringements being registered.

However, FOM’s evidence that the distance was inaccurate was a new element that was deemed significant, relevant and unavailable to the stewards at the time of the decisions on Sunday. That means the penalties will now be reviewed in light of the new element – with the review hearings beginning just 10 minutes after the initial hearing to accept the petition ended – although there is no guarantee that a change to the race result will follow.

While Gasly’s two five-second penalties were added to his final race time, a number of drivers served the penalties during the race itself when making a pit stop, and George Russell received a further drive-through penalty for not serving his five-second time penalty correctly.