Alpine has thrown the dice with the FIA after Pierre Gasly’s Monaco podium was wiped out by a pair of pit-lane speeding penalties that the team insists don’t stack up.
Gasly crossed the line third on the road in Monte Carlo, a result that would’ve been one of the brighter moments of Alpine’s season. Instead, the classification was rewritten after the chequered flag when 10 seconds were added to his race time, dropping him from P3 to P7. Alpine has now confirmed it has formally requested a Right of Review — the only route available if it believes the stewards’ decision was built on something flawed, incomplete, or missing at the time.
“After the result of today’s Monaco Grand Prix, BWT Alpine Formula One Team can confirm it has requested a Right of Review from the FIA following the penalties applied for pit lane speeding,” the team said.
That request matters not just for Alpine, but for the knock-on effect it would have up and down the results. Isack Hadjar inherited the final podium spot once Gasly was penalised, and even had to sit through his own post-race tension when Red Bull was investigated for a potential red-flag regulations breach. Hadjar ultimately kept third — for now. If Alpine can clear the Right of Review threshold, and if the stewards are persuaded to overturn the original call, the podium would be reshuffled again with Gasly reinstated.
Right of Review is often misunderstood in the paddock as a sort of appeal button. It isn’t. Alpine first has to convince the FIA it has “significant new evidence” that wasn’t available when the decision was made. Only if that bar is met do the stewards reconvene to examine the incident again. In other words: Alpine needs more than anger and telemetry it could’ve shown on Sunday afternoon.
And anger, at least, Gasly had in abundance.
“I don’t think there’s anything that would hurt me more right now,” Gasly said after the race. “It’s 10 years of fucking working my ass off for this type of moments, and we did everything right today.
“Standing on that podium, in front of all the fans that turn up, and this is the type of moment that for me can be taken away from us by unfair reasons. What’s going on right now is not right. Hopefully they can make the right calls.”
The stewards’ documentation is uncompromisingly specific: Gasly was recorded at 60.1km/h entering the pit lane on his first visit, triggering a five-second penalty. Around 20 minutes later he was clocked at 60.4km/h for another five seconds. Because he didn’t pit again before the end of the race, those penalties were combined and added to his total race time.
On paper, it’s the kind of black-and-white infringement that rarely turns into a story, particularly when the margins are so small that the limit is essentially treated as absolute. In practice, Monaco has a habit of turning technical details into political arguments because everything is amplified: tight margins, huge consequence, no easy way back.
Gasly is adamant the car’s own systems back him up.
“I know as well, for a fact, that what’s in the car is below the 60km/h,” he insisted. “I know on both occasions I’ve put it [pit lane speed limiter on] way before the line.
“That’s probably the most simple setting you can put in a Formula 1 car.”
The subtext here is where it gets interesting. Gasly wasn’t just contesting a single reading — he was pointing to the bigger pattern from the race, suggesting the volume of similar penalties should make the FIA take a second look at what it thinks it’s measuring.
“Three, four teams that get caught for speeding? Hopefully it rings a bell to the guys that they need to check exactly what’s going on,” he said. “They can see on the data. You can look at the speed that we are going at, it’s precise enough.”
That’s a pointed line because it implies a potential mismatch: the driver’s limiter target and onboard readouts versus how the FIA’s system is determining the speed at the control line. If Alpine has found something genuinely new — a calibration issue, a timing discrepancy, evidence of a system irregularity — then it has at least a fighting chance of getting into the room with the stewards again. If it’s simply arguing that 60.1 and 60.4 are “too close to call”, it will almost certainly go nowhere.
For Gasly, though, this isn’t about decimals; it’s about a moment he felt he’d finally earned in the sport’s most unforgiving race.
“Hopefully we can fight because it’s not going to give that moment back in terms of celebrating on the podium with the people, but a podium is a podium,” he said. “It’s been 10 years. I’m fighting very hard to get every single opportunity. I’ve managed to get five podiums, which is not enough if you ask me.
“I deserve this one. Hopefully they can do something.”
Alpine’s decision to pursue a Right of Review tells you two things. First, the team believes it has something more concrete than a driver’s conviction — because otherwise it’s an expensive exercise in frustration. Second, it’s prepared to risk the paddock eye-roll that comes when a team reopens a result without the ammunition to back it up. Monaco podiums don’t come around often at Alpine, and if the team thinks it has been taken away on a technicality that shouldn’t exist, it’s not going to let it slide quietly.
Whether the FIA agrees there’s “significant new evidence” is the next question — and in 2026, with the margins as tight as ever and the scrutiny only growing, this is exactly the kind of case that tests how robust the sport’s measurement and officiating processes really are.
