Monaco GP controversy far from over as Pierre Gasly verdict sparks fallout

Pierre Gasly’s reinstatement to the podium at the Monaco Grand Prix may have opened up a rather large can of worms.

Following its petition for a right of review of Gasly’s two separate time penalties, Alpine won its argument and gained the French driver’s heroic podium place back.

Pierre Gasly Monaco GP verdict triggers wider questions

Want more PlanetF1.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for news you can trust

• Alpine overturned Pierre Gasly’s Monaco penalties and restored his podium finish.
• FIA timing errors may have led to drivers being wrongly penalised.
• McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes are still weighing their next moves.

Having successfully earned the right to a formal review of the penalties, having presented the necessary “new and relevant” evidence that was unavailable at the time to the Monaco Grand Prix stewards, Alpine managed to get the two five-second time penalties for Gasly rescinded.

A number of factors played into the Enstone-based team’s hands that enabled this success, with the most pertinent being that Gasly’s penalties were applied at a time that meant he never served one during a pitstop: the penalties being applied to his overall finishing time.

A penalty served during a race does not have any regulatory appeals process. Once it’s served, it’s done – the time cannot be ‘given back’ to the driver, but that isn’t the case for a race time add-on. This gave Alpine the opportunity to use the 96-hour window to lodge its petition, with it being the only competitor that could do so.

Another factor to take into account is that the FIA stewards themselves had also suspected something was amiss. With the FIA being the end user of the data supplied by the FOM-managed official timekeeping systems, the stewards could only work with the data being fed to them, and that data showed transgressions such as Gasly’s were occurring.

But, after the third such speeding incident, all of which had been logged at 60.1 km/h, the stewards questioned Race Control, as the frequency of incidents was unusual. Assurances came back that all was fine with the data and, to a point, that was correct: the data itself was correct, but the methodology of how it was being measured in the first place was incorrect.

As the FIA documents released on Friday revealed, the official timekeeper, in its setting up of the various timing loop zones traversing the length of the pitlane, had applied a measurement to the first zone of 2692 centimetres.

However, upon auditing this using LIDAR scans after the event, this first zone was actually 77cm less than this figure, meaning an automatic discrepancy between the measured average speeds of the car, and the reality.

While it’s easy to imagine that the speeds of the cars are measured by a instantaneous data readout that measures every split second of the car trundling down the pitlane, it’s actually done on a more simplistic ‘distance divided by time’ average through the divided up zones of the pitlane and, with one of the zones actually shorter – a factor created by the barriers allowing for a shorter trajectory this year than last – the timekeeper’s figures were wrong.

The stewards also pointed out that the wording of Article B1.6.3a of the Sporting Regulations does not state that the speed limit must be solely determined by the official timekeeping process, pointing out that the question thus evolves into a simple one: Did Gasly exceed the speed limit of 60km/h?

Using the correct measurements, Gasly was actually travelling at 58.7km/h and 58.8km/h, meaning there was demonstrable evidence, presented by the timekeeper itself, that the breaches had not occurred.

Good news for Alpine, who won the argument and its podium place, but a clear admission that a mistake had been made. A happy moment for Gasly, but what about the other drivers who had already served penalties?

“The Stewards note that in relation to other cars that were penalised, some served their penalty and this regrettably, impacted their race strategies and therefore their race result,” the verdict read.

“There will undoubtedly remain questions as to whether those breaches were genuine. There is no regulation that gives the Stewards the power to “undo” a served penalty.

“In any case, it is impossible to imagine how such power could be applied. Notably, no other party petitioned for a Right of Review within the allowable time frame.”

But it’s this admission of an error being made that a can of worms has been opened: there is now clear evidence that a critical mistake in the organisation and administration of the race itself was made and that several drivers could have served time penalties for breaches that never occurred.

PlanetF1.com understands that both McLaren and Red Bull, two teams with cars now classified behind Gasly, have signalled their intent to appeal the rescinding.

More on the Pierre Gasly verdict

Gasly podium under new threat as rivals prepare to appeal

Pierre Gasly reveals Monaco ‘injustice’ pain after podium verdict

This intention had to be lodged within one hour of the verdict, but this doesn’t mean that an appeal will actually happen: a 96-hour window is now granted within which they can decide to proceed.

Racing Bulls has elected against getting involved.

As for Mercedes, team boss Toto Wolff postured that his squad may look at legal options in its attempt to seek redress: George Russell’s initial time penalty spiralled into a terrible race for the championship challenger as he was given a drive-through penalty for failing to serve the initial penalty properly.

However, there is no clear mechanism in the International Sporting Code or the regulations that would appear to allow Mercedes to pursue recourse, and Wolff confirmed there would be no appeal regarding the Gasly decision “but we would like the FIA to look at what could be the remedies for George’s race.

“I think we are having some timing limitations and some other legal constraints, but definitely, something we have a reason to be annoyed for. And I wish we could have had those conversations before the race on Sunday.

“We were on the phone with our lawyers to look at what can we do for George.

“The drive-through, if it didn’t happen at the end, is the equivalent of 20 seconds’ race time. What would 20-seconds race time have meant for his result?

“Do we think that we realistically have a chance of reverting the result? I don’t think so.

“But we definitely have to give it a go if we see that there is a millimetre of chance to do so, and bring him back to whatever it was: P4, we’ve calculated, P3 or P4.”

Certainly, while a final race classification may have been issued by the FIA for Monaco, confirming Gasly in third place, this matter is not yet fully closed: with the uniqueness of the situation resulting in a clear admission of errors made, possibly some very costly ones for several drivers, just how far will these unhappy competitors take the matter?

Now that the bottle is uncorked, the genie can’t be put back in.

What did Alpine say about winning the podium back?

“All I can say is we wanted clarity. We’ve got it,” was Alpine’s Steve Nielsen’s summary of events after hosting an impromptu media session in the wake of the announcement.

“We wanted justice, and we feel we’ve got it, and we’re happy with that.”

With a clear and well-explained verdict offered by the stewards as to what had unfolded to create the confusion, PlanetF1.com asked Nielsen whether he was satisfied the matter was unique enough to not need more fundamental changes of process to ensure a repeat never occurs.

“All credit to FOM and the FIA,” he said.

“They’ve been completely transparent with us from the beginning and, while we had our suspicions, we didn’t know what the detail of what had gone on until we got the report from FOM on Wednesday afternoon.

“FOM and the FIA are well-run companies. They’ve got.. I was at FOM for many years, as some of you know, and they equip themselves to a very high standard almost all the time.

“In this instance, there was an error. They didn’t try and hide it, which was appreciated, and I’m sure they’ll learn from it and move on.”

But, despite the vindication of having the penalties removed, Alpine did not get its moment of glory by way of a podium celebration and that, Nielsen said, is something that stings.

“It may just be Steve’s vote but, if I could trade, I’d have that podium moment over the points. That’s the bit we can’t ever get back,” he said.

“It’s a shame for Pierre, and it’s a shame for the team, but we’ve got as much as we can.

“We’ve got the position and the points, which is nice, but if I could choose, I’d have the podium, that emotion, which is what you can’t get.”

Want to be the first to know exclusive information from the F1 paddock? Join our broadcast channel on WhatsApp to get the scoop on the latest developments from our team of accredited journalists.

You can also subscribe to the PlanetF1 YouTube channelfor exclusive features, hear from our paddock journalists with stories from the heart of Formula 1 and much more!