Pierre Gasly stripped of Monaco GP podium after FIA court ruling

The FIA International Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of McLaren and Red Bull after the hearing brought by the two teams after Pierre Gasly's Monaco penalties were initially rescinded.

With those punishments now being reinstated, therefore, the Alpine driver has lost his Monaco Grand Prix podium, with Isack Hadjar instead returned to third place, his first for Red Bull.

Gasly, meanwhile, drops to seventh place in the classifications for the weekend in Monte Carlo in early June, whilst Oscar Piastri, Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad have all been promoted, to fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively.

A hearing was held in Paris on August 25th, where McLaren and Red Bull appealed against decisions 1 and 2 in document 99 of the Monaco Grand Prix, where the stewards decided to cancel two five-second time penalties handed to Gasly for speeding in the pit-lane, after Alpine had successfully lodged a right of review.

It was found during the initial right of review process that the official timekeepers had erred in measuring the length of the pit-lane, meaning it was possible for drivers to be pinged as going over the 60kph limit in force even when they did not do so. 

It was found that this information about the incorrect length of the pit-lane was not available to the stewards at the time they awarded Gasly the penalties, and so met the "relevant, significant, and new" threshold for the right of review to progress to the penalties themselves being examined. 

Gasly was one of a number of drivers, including team-mate Franco Colapinto, McLaren's Oscar Piastri, and Mercedes' George Russell, to pick up a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit-lane, which, in Gasly's case, was 10 seconds through two separate instances, with the removal of his penalties moving him back to third place, having been dropped from third on the road to seventh in the provisional results.

Piastri did serve his five-second penalty during the race, and Russell attempted to serve his, but did not do so, and was awarded a drive-through penalty, dropping him to 12th, but in light of the successful Alpine bid to overturn Gasly's penalties, McLaren and Mercedes could do so for Piastri or Russell, as they had already been served.

No mechanism exists in the F1 rulebook to wipe out the effects of a penalty already served, meaning five seconds or the drive-through loss time could not be wiped from Piastri or Russell's elapsed race time, but as Gasly had not served his 10-seconds' worth, it was added to his elapsed race time, before their ultimate rescinding. 

More to follow...