Red Bull set for appeal over Pierre Gasly controversy as 'matter of principle'

Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies has indicated that the team is set to formally appeal the stewards' decision to reinstate Pierre Gasly's Monaco podium as a "matter of principle."

Over the Barcelona weekend, Alpine successfully overturned the two five-second time penalties Gasly received in Monaco for pit-lane speeding, and which dropped him from third to seventh on the road, promoting Red Bull's Isack Hadjar to third.

However, during the Right of Review process, it was found that there was a measuring error in a pit-lane timing loop, meaning it was 77cm shorter than expected - creating the possibility for drivers to be caught speeding, which is calculated by the known-distance of the pit-lane and the time taken to travel it at the limit - which in this case was 60kph.

Of all the speeding penalties in Monaco, five of the six were 60.1kph, but crucially, Gasly did not serve his penalties during the race, and they were added to his elapsed race time. However, George Russell, who ultimately served a drive-through penalty for not serving his initial five-second correctly, and Oscar Piastri both received sanctions. 

No mechanism exists in the F1 rulebook to cancel a penalty which has already been served, which is important in this case as without the five-seconds added to his pit-stop, Piastri would have finished third on the road.

However, to further complicate matters, Russell was running in third place when he pitted to serve the drive-through before falling to 12th, with Mercedes boss Toto Wolff confirming on Friday that the team was "on the phone to the lawyers" about whether any remedy was possible.

On Friday, after the FIA stewards handed down the Gasly verdict, both McLaren and Mekies' Red Bull signalled their intentions to appeal the verdict, but did not formally trigger the process with a 96-hour window in which to do this. 

This window ends on Tuesday, June 16th, with Mekies explaining that Red Bull was seeking further information as a "matter of principle" for the rest of grand prix racing.

"Look, we have not yet submitted the full appeal; we have a bit of time for that," Mekies told media, including RacingNews365. 

"But we think it's more so a matter of principle for the goodness of the sport, in order for the sport to get the right clarity on how we go about non-appealable penalties during the race, and getting the right results at the end of the race.

"No measurement system is perfect; there is not one single way to measure the speed, and they are all wrong. However, we have been working with that measurement system for a very high number of years; it was the same as the day before, the same as on Friday, the same as the previous years, and we have all adapted to it.

"And 17 or 18 cars have managed to be legal, so we just need to make sure that as a sport we have a solid enough approach, so that moving forward we get the right clarity to the fans and for the competitors."