How Alpine presented its case to overturn Gasly's Monaco penalty

The stewards' decision to overturn Pierre Gasly's Monaco Grand Prix pitlane speeding penalties was a bittersweet victory for Alpine. Sure, team principal Steve Nielsen reckons that Alpine has been granted justice, in being rewarded with the nine points that Gasly lost after being demoted to seventh. 

Yet it lost the chance to celebrate a genuine podium finish, a rarity for a team of Alpine's stature. Nielsen even suggested that he'd rather have been in Isack Hadjar's position, where the Frenchman had soaked in the adulation of a podium finish before losing three points in his demotion to fourth.

To Alpine, it was clear that there was an issue in the pitlane, especially since there was a raft of pitlane speeding fines through the practice sessions, and all within 0.5km/h. Nielsen says that the team wasn't entirely sure what it was, but its arguments hinged on the definition of the shortest theoretical route through the first two timing loops. 

Formula One Management, which also works as the official timekeeper of races, set the minimum distance between the first two timing loops at 2692cm. This was the "zone" at which the pitlane overspeed was triggered. With the distance set, this is divided by the time between both loops being activated to produce the average speeds in that zone.

LIDAR scans of the track later showed that the shortest potential distance between the two loops was actually 2615cm, which is what Alpine's right of review noted. Although technically impossible to take that route entirely given the width of the car, the real-world minimum distance was still deemed to be shorter than the 2692cm set.

During Gasly's two penalties, his intervals between the opening set of loops were clocked at 1.604s and 1.602s. Over the full 2692cm distance, this puts Gasly over the speed limit; at the theoretical 2615cm minimum distance between loops, he is almost 2km/h below. The stewards' report adds that the theoretical minimum distance would need to be over 2670cm for Gasly to be penalised. 

In essence, the timing was correct, but the distance being at least 20cm longer than later measurements had demonstrated made it seem like Gasly was going faster. 

Pierre Gasly, Alpine

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

"We were aware that there had been issues with that part of the track on Friday and on Saturday, so we had some doubts about it and because of that we'd already warned our drivers about it," Nielsen explained. 

"And when we started seeing all these penalties come in the race, while we didn't know exactly what the error was, it was not unreasonable to think there's something wrong. 

"I've been doing this for a few years now, and across the season, okay you see pitlane speeding, it's one or two, maybe four or five in a whole year.

"So to see six, three of which were ours, in one afternoon, combined with what we knew about Friday and Saturday, you think 'okay there's something wrong'. We didn't know exactly what it was, [but] we were very sure there was something wrong."

What changed versus last year? It appears that a small tweak in positioning of the pit entry wall had allowed drivers to take a marginally different route to last year, thus shortening the theoretical minimum route. Although the stewards made reference to this minimum route not being possible, the regulations refer to the measured minimum distance regardless.

This is not a problem for a standard pitlane, which is often a straight line for any active speed-limited zones, but Monaco is curved and thus the distance varies depending on the arc taken.

"I think we would have still done what we did, because honestly we wanted to understand it," Nielsen added when asked if Alpine would still have submitted a right of review in the event that it served its penalties in-race. 

"We have very accurate on-car data, and we've all incurred pitlane speeding before, and when you incur it, most of the time we see it in our own data before the FIA even tell us. Sometimes they tell us and we look and we see it, so every time you see it.

Pierre Gasly, Alpine

Photo by: Mark Thompson / Getty Images

"The different thing was this time, all our control engineers were saying there's nothing in our data, so that added with the issues we knew from Friday and Saturday, and the number of them, we were very, very sure that we were innocent.

"It was really only because another team had said to us, we think there's an issue there, be careful, and there was a meeting that was attended by some teams where it was discussed that there was an issue, undiagnosed.

"I'm not sure I would have done anything differently, honestly. But because, you know, 99 times out of 100, and it's probably more than that, when you get pinged for pitlane speeding, you don't even question it. A guy comes on the radio and says, 'yeah, we see it in data', and you just take the penalty. 

"This time was different. It wasn't in our data, which is the biggest alarm bell for us."

After receiving the penalties, Alpine reduced its pit limiter speed during the red flag on the off-chance that anything further occurred, and then submitted its right of review afterwards knowing that a pitlane speeding penalty was not directly appealable. 

The team had been able to demonstrate that at no point did Gasly exceed the 60km/h limit, and thus the penalty was removed. There is no mechanism for other teams to follow suit as the 96-hour window to submit a right of review has elapsed, and nor could a team that had already served the penalty have it overturned.