- Alpine file Right of Review after pit lane penalties cost Gasly his Monaco podium.
- Two five-second penalties in the race dropped Gasly from third to seventh.
- Reconfigured pit exit caught multiple drivers out, raising questions of timing system.
Pierre Gasly crossed the finish line third in Monaco, only to lose the podium minutes later. Two pit lane speeding penalties, worth five seconds each, dropped him to seventh. Alpine have since filed a Right of Review with the FIA, arguing the penalties were unjust.
The Monaco Grand Prix was already a complicated race. Safety Cars and a red flag shuffled the order repeatedly.
Gasly started ninth, worked his way up to fourth, and then moved to third when George Russell received a drive-through penalty late in the race. He took the chequered flag believing he had secured his sixth career podium.
The stewards ruled otherwise. Gasly had exceeded the 60kph pit lane speed limit on two separate occasions. The combined 10-second penalty dropped him outside the top five into seventh place.
Alpine and Gasly react
Alpine wasted little time in pushing back. The team confirmed in a statement that they had “requested a Right of Review from the FIA following the penalties applied for pit lane speeding.”
The move signals the team believes it has a credible argument, not just a grievance. Gasly spoke to the media soon after the result was confirmed. His words were brief and painful.
“Right now, I’m just heartbroken. I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to be speaking right now,” he said. He insisted that neither he nor the team had made an error, saying the team had set the correct speed limiter and that he had activated it well before the designated line on both occasions.
The penalty stung harder given how rarely Gasly reaches the rostrum. He has collected only five podiums in 10 seasons of Formula 1.
“It hurts when you pass the line on the podium and then… I don’t know…” he told reporters, his sentence trailing off. He urged Alpine to press ahead with the appeal, maintaining the team had followed every required procedure.
Speaking to Motorsport.com, Gasly pointed to the volume of drivers penalised as a sign that something was wrong with the system.
“When you have three or four teams that get caught for speeding… Hopefully, it rings a bell to the guys that they need to check exactly what’s going on because it’s just not right,” he said. He added that he was certain his car had stayed below the speed limit throughout both pit visits.
Why this was not an isolated incident
Gasly was not the only driver to fall foul of the pit lane rules in Monaco. Lewis Hamilton also received a speeding penalty. However, he served it during a stop under the late Safety Car and kept his second-place finish.
Oscar Piastri, George Russell and others were caught for the same offence. Alpine itself had both its cars penalised, with Franco Colapinto also cited for speeding in the pit lane.
The technical explanation behind so many violations points to how Formula 1 measures pit lane speed. Rather than using a single speed gun, the FIA calculates an average across the fast lane using transponders and timing loops embedded in the circuit.
The pit exit in Monaco was also reconfigured this year to accommodate the grid’s new 11th team. The revised layout appears to have encouraged drivers to cut slightly inside the line marking the fast lane as it bends towards the exit.
Alex Albon was reportedly told that his penalty was related to crossing that line near the area used by Cadillac. On a timing system built around averages, even a small deviation in line can produce a reading that exceeds the limit.
The steep climb Alpine faces
The Right of Review process sets a deliberately high threshold. Teams cannot succeed simply by repeating arguments the stewards already considered.
Alpine must present what the FIA regulations call a “significant and relevant new element” of evidence, one that was unavailable at the time the penalty was issued.
The recent record on such reviews is mixed at best. Williams succeeded in 2025, when new camera footage cleared Carlos Sainz of a collision with Liam Lawson at the Dutch Grand Prix.
There is also a complicating factor specific to Monaco. The FIA had reportedly discussed the pit lane configuration with teams before race weekend, which is why several teams warned their drivers to take care at the entry.
If the governing body can show the teams were already aware of the risks, it weakens Alpine’s claim that something new and material has emerged. Unless the team can produce concrete evidence the timing system malfunctioned or was applied incorrectly, recovering Gasly’s podium looks unlikely.
