Gasly Loses Monaco Podium After McLaren Wins Appeal

Pierre Gasly has lost his Monaco Grand Prix podium after McLaren won their appeal against a chaotic series of pit-lane speeding penalties that turned the result on its head months after the chequered flag.

The Frenchman had been promoted to third after Alpine successfully challenged two five‑second penalties originally handed to him in Monte Carlo. That ruling is now gone. Gasly, who finished third on the road on 7 June, drops back to seventh – the position he held in the initial official classification.

The big winner is Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar, restored to the podium and back in third place. McLaren’s Oscar Piastri moves up to fourth.

At the heart of the dispute sat a basic but costly error: Formula 1 had the length of the Monaco pit lane wrong. With the distance mis-measured, the system calculating average speeds believed cars were travelling faster than they actually were, triggering multiple speeding penalties that never should have existed.

Those penalties shaped the race, the strategy calls, and ultimately the celebrations. Alpine pounced first, overturning Gasly’s two time penalties and walking away with what looked like a famous podium in the streets of Monte Carlo.

McLaren kept pushing. Their challenge went after the root of the problem – the pit-lane data itself – and the latest verdict has swung the result again, this time in their favour and Red Bull’s.

For Gasly, it is a brutal comedown from the emotional high of a Monaco podium, stripped not by a mistake in the cockpit, but by a measurement error in race control. For Hadjar, it restores a landmark result in his fledgling F1 career, even if the podium photos and champagne belong to someone else.

The race is long over. The arguments clearly are not.