'Alpine wants to reclaim Gasly’s podium, but Red Bull has little to fear'

Several drivers received a 5-second time penalty during the race in Monte Carlo for speeding in the pit lane. In other races that happens occasionally, but here one driver after another was caught. Gradually, you could say it was no coincidence.

It quickly became clear that there was a possibility in the pit lane to cut a tiny section, resulting in fewer meters being driven in the pit lane. However, the FIA’s timing equipment in the pit lane calculated the average speed of the cars over the full distance—so without the shortcut. That likely explains why the F1 teams involved did not see on live telemetry that their cars were going too fast, while the FIA did.

Teams are free to request a review of a decision made by the stewards, but a protest will only be considered if, in the preceding phase via a Right of Review, new information has become available that was not available at the time the original decision was made.

GPblog understands that the teams were aware in advance of the shortcut in the pit lane, so they could have taken it into account and avoided cutting it. Moreover, several people had already been penalized before Pierre Gasly received his penalty; the penalty that ultimately dropped him from third to fifth place. Apparently, no warning bells went off at the penalized teams to say: Let’s be careful in the pit lane.

Later on Sunday afternoon, Pierre Gasly told the media including GPblog: “Nothing could hurt me more, working 10 years for this f***ing moment.” Perhaps the shattering of this dream prompted Alpine to request the Right to Review, even though no new information appears to be available.

Red Bull Racing therefore seems to have little to fear from the scenario in which the Right to Review is successful and Gasly gets to argue again before the stewards that the penalty was unjustified. In that case, Isack Hadjar would keep his third place, meaning this Frenchman’s dream did come true.