Gasly “completely understands” rivals’ sense of “injustice” over his cancelled penalty | Formula 1
Pierre Gasly says he understands why his rivals are appealing against the decision which elevated him to third place in the Monaco Grand Prix.
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The Alpine driver crossed the line in third place in Monaco but was immediately relegated to seventh place by a pair of outstanding penalties for speeding in the pit lane. The stewards cancelled those penalties five days later after Gasly’s team requested they review their decision and a mistake was discovered.
However four other drivers served pit lane speeding penalties were unable to benefit from the same post-race change as Gasly, as they served theirs before the chequered flag fell. Two of those teams – McLaren and Red Bull – have now brought an appeal against the stewards’ decision to cancel only Gasly’s penalty.
Gasly reiterated his view the stewards must cancel a penalty if they have discovered it is wrong and they have the power to overturn it.
“I think for the good of the sport we don’t want to see what happened again in the future,” he said. “There was a mistake done during that weekend and I think it’s important we all learn from it.
“At the same time – I think that’s what I said the other time – if a mistake was done and can be corrected because it’s been unfairly given for no wrongdoing. So in that case, in our situation, if you have a chance to correct it, I think it’s the right thing as a sport to do it. I must say I was very pleased by the actions and the outcome of the decision post-race.”
However he has some sympathy for rivals such as Oscar Piastri and George Russell whose races were negatively affected by their penalties.
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“Obviously from McLaren, Oscar, George’s situation, I completely understand that for their own performance – I’ve got nothing to do with their results – but they probably feel some sort of injustice from what’s been done to them. But that has nothing to do with Alpine or our own race, and I think that’s something they need to sort out on their side.
“But I do think if you can correct a mistake which was done, it’s the right way of approaching it, to [go] back on it. That’s what I’d like to see in the future: obviously [I’d rather that] we don’t see this situation, but if a mistake is done I think it’s the right way to correct it.”
Piastri said the first thing the authorities should take care of is “make sure the pit lane is measured correctly” for future races. He is also concerned that the decision on Gasly’s penalty will encourage teams to avoid serving penalties during the race so they can challenge them later.
“What is difficult in that situation is Alpine questioned the penalty, I think everybody questioned the penalties, I’ve never seen a race like that where there’s so many pit lane speeding penalties. In my case, specifically, I knew I wasn’t speeding either. But the approach is always you have the penalty, you can’t really argue with it in a lot of cases.
“Which I think in 99% of [cases] is a good thing. The risk that we have now is any time a team or a driver feels that a penalty is potentially wrong or they have a chance of changing it, you go through this whole saga where we still don’t officially know the results of the race a month later, which is the biggest thing.
“I kind of agree with Pierre’s point that if there’s something that can be corrected and I can definitely see why it can be, but it also sets a bit of a tricky precedent because you could just end up with everybody not serving their penalties and then arguing about it for weeks after, which is not what anyone wants to see.”
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Gasly confirmed he has received his third-place trophy from Isack Hadjar, who stood on the podium after the race. “It looks good in my home,” he said. “It looks good in the cabinet and I’m obviously happy to get it back.”
“I’m happy that I have to give it to Pierre at least,” said Hadjar, “to give it to my friend and not someone else, so at least that’s the good part.”
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Originally published on www.racefans.net — View original
