Kimi Antonelli has dominated the Monaco Grand Prix, leading the race from start to finish. Two safety car periods and a red flag couldn't stop him while behind it was an eventful affair with retirements and penalties all over. Hamilton finished second with Hadjar provisionally in third.
McLaren wanted to change tires so they had to serve the penalty. Gasly gambled by not changing and then had the luck of Leclerc crashing on restart leading to a free tire change under a red flag. I'm super critical of McLaren strategy but this was fine. Without red flag we have Gasly fighting to stay ahead on super old tires.
In Monaco he could have kept up the field with wooden wheels.
McLaren wanted to change tires so they had to serve the penalty. Gasly gambled by not changing and then had the luck of Leclerc crashing on restart leading to a free tire change under a red flag. I'm super critical of McLaren strategy but this was fine. Without red flag we have Gasly fighting to stay ahead on super old tires.
In Monaco he could have kept up the field with wooden wheels.
I'm not sure, I think he was under threat even on tires of same age. With a big tire deficit we may have had an real overtake.
Based on this, so if this happens in future, your best to ignore the penalty, never take it and then argue it after the race. This is a Massive mess and it going to create new and exiting "Review Room" podium in future.
I believe in the chain of command, Its the chain I use to beat you till you do what i want!!!
Based on this, so if this happens in future, your best to ignore the penalty, never take it and then argue it after the race. This is a Massive mess and it going to create new and exiting "Review Room" podium in future.
Or probably, better regs and penalty decisions over time.
Reinstating Gaslys podium is a massive cock up. There are going to be a lot of repercussion from this
If they give him back the 5 sec, he gains points? Because the drive through penalty will never be erased since it's a penalty to the team cockup during his pitstop.
This is now an absolute mess. I cant see how the F1 can selectively remove penalties. They either have to rescind them all, or none of them. They cannot rely on the excuse of "well this would have altered how the reace was ran" as they threw that in th bin years ago.
The FIA's decsion to allow drivers and teams to take panalties post race has always been ridiculous. It used to be that you had to serve your penalty in the race, and you were blacked flagged if you didn't. The FIA have boxed themselves into a corner. The FIA willingingly applies time penalties post race, artificially changeing the the order the cars finish the race knowing that this directly impacting real time race strategies, often turning the "penalty" into a benifit. Once they decide they can artifically add the penalty time to a car post race, it becomes very hard to defend artifically removing time.
Dont get me wrong, Gasly deserved to have his penalties removed. But they need to learn from this situation.
In every other sport a penalty/infringment/foul/violation is punished during the course of the match/game. Its accepted that the umpire/referee makes errors and these are part of the sport and not overturned. Its annoying but thats how it is and people accept it. To change the result should be considered an extreme action and an extreme action requires extraodinary, force majeure-like circumstances.
The FIA decided long ago that it was normal for them to alter the results post race. Rightly or wrongly but always very messy.
Could you imagine if cricket decided that an LBW decision in the first session of day one of a test match was wrong and decided to penalties a team 100 runs after the 5 day test match was over?
Simple fix i think. Make cars drivers serve penalties during the race. Dont change results. Accept that sometimes people get things wrong.
The hardest part of this fix is the FIA being willing to say, yes we fck'd up, but the result is the result and we'll try and make sure we dont make the same mistake again.
The NBA often issue officiating review reports of the final minutes of games noting where referees made correct or incorrect calls. But they never change the reslt.
Just my opinion/thoughts, right or wrong. Keen to hear what everyone else thinks.
Some misinformed comments here. This is isn't a massive issue. Every team can appeal an unserved penalty within a time limit.
Alpine followed the process and provided critical information that they requested from FOM in regards to the timing.
This process was available to every team, providing they had not already served the penalty in race. There's no mechanism to undo that, and that isn't what happened to Gasly.
Nothing will be changed except the due diligence when preparing the track for the Grand Prix.
Has anyone done the Speed=distance/time calculation to see how far out the timing loops were?
Guess also depends on their location in the pitlane and how it was measured as if the cars were cutting the corner, but the FIA measured it out as going around the corner that could add up to going “too fast”
17. In its report, which formed part of the Alpine submission, the Official Timekeeper advised that for its setup of the pit lane speeding zones, it applied a measurement to the length of the first “zone” of 2692cm (accurate to within 1 cm)
18. However, the Official Timekeeper’s report then states that using LIDAR scans (Light Detection and Ranging), presumably post event, the shortest distance between the first and second loops of the zone was found to be only 2615cm, i.e. 77cm less than the setup distance used by them to calculate the speed of the car in that “zone” of the pit lane. However, that distance does not take into account the width of the car, which would increase the shortest distance that could be travelled, by a small amount.
https://www.racefans.net/2026/06/12/gas ... penalties/
There you have the soooo simple 49 points explanation. No comments. Except to point out that a 27 m distance doesn't need to be calibrated with satellite navigation or anything else... one can measure it with a standard measuting stick and a chalk!