Three months, two appeals and one very confused timing loop later, Formula 1 has finally decided who actually finished third at Monaco. Spoiler: it isn’t Pierre Gasly anymore.
The FIA’s International Court of Appeal has ruled against the Alpine driver, stripping him of the podium he originally lost, then regained, then lost again. Isack Hadjar is reinstated to third, just in time for a Monza weekend that already had enough storylines without this one resurfacing.
A Podium That Changed Hands Three Times
Gasly crossed the line third on the road back in June, only to be demoted to seventh after a post-race time penalty. That penalty stemmed from a fault in the FOM-administered timing loops in the pit lane, the kind of infrastructure error that has no business deciding championship points months into a season. Unlike several other drivers hit with similar speeding penalties, Gasly never served his in the race itself.
Alpine, understandably unwilling to let a timing glitch cost their driver a rare podium, launched a Right of Review and won. Third place was handed back to Gasly. Job done, or so it seemed.
Except McLaren and Red Bull weren’t having it. Both squads appealed to the FIA’s International Court of Appeal, with a hearing eventually taking place after last month’s Dutch Grand Prix. Now, ahead of the Italian Grand Prix, the verdict has landed: Gasly loses the podium, Hadjar gets it back, as reported by PlanetF1.
Why This Took So Long Is the Real Story
Forget the rights and wrongs of the penalty itself for a second. The bigger embarrassment here is the timeline. A race result from June has only just been settled in September, on the eve of a completely different Grand Prix weekend. Fans moved on, storylines moved on, and yet the FIA’s appeal machinery ground its way through the process at a pace that makes a Monza traffic jam look brisk.
That the sport’s own timing equipment triggered the original penalty only makes it worse. A technical fault in FOM’s pit lane loops shouldn’t be capable of swinging a podium finish back and forth between three different outcomes over a three-month stretch. If the infrastructure can’t be trusted to log a speed reading correctly, what exactly are stewards basing split-second penalty decisions on during a live race?
Hadjar’s Rollercoaster Result
Spare a thought for Hadjar, who has now had this podium taken away and handed back to him depending on which week you ask. It’s a strange way to build confidence in a result, and it says something about the state of F1’s review process that a driver can find out he’s been on the podium at Monaco via a court ruling issued during an entirely different race week.
Gasly‘s current points total, sitting at 44 for the season, will presumably need adjusting once the ink dries on this ruling, though Alpine’s reaction will matter more than the paperwork. PlanetF1 reports that Alpine is assessing its options in response to the verdict, with a statement from the team expected imminently.
What Alpine Can Actually Do About It
Not much, realistically. The International Court of Appeal sits at the top of the FIA’s judicial pyramid for a reason: its rulings are meant to be final. Alpine can grumble, issue a strongly worded statement, and point out that a timing fault caused all of this in the first place, but overturning a Court of Appeal decision is not a realistic path back to that podium.
What Alpine can do is make noise about the process itself, and given how this saga has unfolded, that noise would be entirely justified. A team that won a legitimate Right of Review only to have it clawed back by a higher court, months later, over a fault in equipment nobody on the grid controls, has every right to ask why F1’s own timing systems are allowed to cause this much chaos.
Monza Arrives With Unfinished Business Still Being Finished
The timing of this ruling, dropping just as the paddock arrives at Monza this weekend, feels almost designed to overshadow build-up to a circuit already generating plenty of talk about chaotic racing under F1’s tighter energy limits. Instead, teams and fans are left relitigating a race from June.
None of this changes the standings in any way that alters the shape of this season. Hadjar remains well off the pace of the frontrunners in the championship picture, and Gasly’s points swing does nothing to disturb Alpine’s position in the constructors’ fight. But as a case study in how slowly and clumsily F1’s judicial process can move, Monaco’s phantom podium will stick around a lot longer than the three seconds it took to cross that finish line.
