Alpine's Pierre Gasly reinstated to F1 Monaco GP podium after error

Alpine has successfully overturned Pierre Gasly's penalties at the Monaco Grand Prix, meaning he has been reinstated onto the podium. 

The French squad challenged the original pair of five-second time penalties handed to Gasly for speeding in the Monaco pit lane and successfully presented new evidence which the stewards agreed was "significant and relevant" during a first virtual hearing that took place on Thursday. 

A second hearing followed in which it was determined that the penalties, which saw Gasly drop from third to seventh in the final race classification, rescinded. The decision was announced on Friday morning ahead of opening practice at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix. 

It means Gasly has been reinstated into third place on the podium, with Isack Hadjar losing his first rostrum finish for Red Bull. 

Hadjar subsequently drops to fourth, ahead of McLaren's Oscar Piastri, while the Racing Bulls pair of Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad shuffle down to sixth and seventh. The rest of the Monaco Grand Prix result remains unchanged. 

Alpine and Gasly have subsequently gained an additional nine points, while Racing Bulls has lost four points.

As a result, Alpine has moved 15 points clear of Racing Bulls in the battle for fifth place in the constructors' world championship. Red Bull has also lost three points but remains a distant fourth. 

The decision opens up a potential can of worms for F1 as a total of five drivers were hit with time penalties for exceeding the 60km/h pit lane speed limit. 

Championship contender George Russell was hurt the most, after he was hit with an additional drive-through penalty for failing to correctly serve his initial punishment. 

As such, Russell dropped out of the points and has been left 68 points behind Mercedes team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli. 

There is a chance that further protests could follow, with the possibility that the teams demoted by the decision could appeal.

A Mercedes insider said the team is "livid".

But Russell conceded to media including Crash.net on Thursday that there is "no turning back" on his Monaco penalties. 

“It's very frustrating when something seemingly totally out of your control and the team's control ultimately completely destroys your weekend,” Russell said. 

"I've got to be honest I haven't personally looked for an explanation because it's history and there is nothing I can do now, unlike Pierre [Gasly] ,for example, who can maybe get his result back.

“It was kind of why I was pleading with the FIA and the red flag to not serve that drive-through penalty and to at least penalise me after the race if they feel it was justifiable because once you serve the penalty there's no turning back.”

For penalties served in the race, there is no way to address them if they have been incorrectly handed out. This precedent became apparent at last year's Dutch Grand Prix during an incident involving Carlos Sainz and Liam Lawson. 

This could prompt teams to not serve such penalties during races in future if they believe them to be incorrect, and hope they can challenge decisions in a post-race right of review. 

How Alpine won its case 

The key difference in Alpine's case was that out of all the drivers to be penalised, Gasly was the only one not to serve his penalty during the race itself. 

Alpine was able to prove that the distance used in calculating the official timing provided by FOM and the pit-lane speed was "inaccurate and overestimated the speed" Gasly was driving at. 

Crucially, FOM admitted it had made a key error because it had measured the distance of the pitlane inaccurately. 

It was ultimately determined that "a significant delta in the distance used to calculate the speed and distance which could be driven...and which appears to have been driven".

"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 FIA stewards wrote.

"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."