MONTMELO, Spain (AP) — Alpine driver Pierre Gasly's third-place finish at the Monaco Grand Prix was reinstated Friday after racing officials accepted an appeal filed by the Formula 1 team and admitted a mistake had been made by the race stewards.
Gasly finished the Monaco race third but was demoted to seventh place after race officials handed him two five-second penalties for allegedly going too fast in the pitlane.
Alpine immediately appealed the ruling, and the FIA found that the timekeepers had erred in clocking his car's speed.
The FIA said in an X post on Friday that “the stewards of the Monaco GP have rescinded Gasly’s penalties, effectively handing him back his third place finish.”
Gasly celebrated the decision, which gives Alpine its first podium since 2024, on social media.
“WE GOT IT BACK!! P3 in Monaco!” the Frech driver wrote on X. “Huge thanks to my amazing team and all the people who supported us!! Thanks FIA & F1 for the transparency of the situation. One to remember.”
Already on Thursday, the FIA said that it was considering Alpine’s appeal because the timekeepers at the Monaco race had provided evidence that they had made a mistake. FIA said that the “distance used in calculating” car speeds was wrong and “overestimated the speed” of Gasly’s car.
The decision came five days after the Monaco race while teams were getting set to practice for the next race in Barcelona.
Red Bull's Isack Hadjar will drop from third to fourth place in the Monaco results.
Gasly was one of several drivers to get penalties for speeding in the pitlane during the Monaco face, which was won by Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli.
“We were aware that there had been issues with that part of the track on Friday and on Saturday, so we had some doubts about it," Alpine managing director Steve Nielsen told reporters at the Barcelona race. "And when we saw all these penalties in the race, even though we didn’t know exactly what the error was, it was not unreasonable to think that something was wrong.”
Title hopeful George Russell was hit hardest after he initially received a five-second penalty for speeding which was then upgraded to a more severe drive-through penalty because his Mercedes team didn’t wait the required five seconds before working on his car at his next pit stop. That dropped Russell out of the top 10 and he didn’t score any points, falling further behind Antonelli, the points leader.
Mercedes and the other teams given penalties did not appeal in time, and race officials apparently are not going to alter their results.
Still, seeing the Gasly decision, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said on Friday that his team is in conversations with FIA to see “what could be done for George.”
“Cleary without the penalty and without us not serving it correctly, it would have been a totally different outcome for (Russell's) race,” Wolff said. “We would like the FIA to look at other remedies.”
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AP sports writer James Ellingworth contributed from Dusseldorf, Germany.
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