Friday’s FIA court of appeal overturned Alpine’s Monaco GP victory on the penalties tied to a wrongly measured pit lane, sending Pierre Gasly from third place back to seventh. The ruling restored Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar to third and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri to fourth, ending a brief period in which Gasly had been classified on the podium.
The dispute existed because the Monaco pit lane had been measured incorrectly, which led to speeding penalties that were later challenged. Two of those penalties were for Gasly, and Alpine won its first appeal before the court of appeal reversed that outcome under the international sporting code.
That reversal made the matter fresh again on Friday in Monza, where the fight over Monaco was still being argued before the Italian Grand Prix. Flavio Briatore accused a judge in the panel of being linked with McLaren, said he arrived with an A4 sheet of paper, and named the judge as Filippo Marchino. He said the judge had been “very nasty” and was acting like a prosecutor.
Andrea Stella rejected those claims in blunt terms, calling them insulting and saying anyone making such allegations should be ready to take responsibility in public. He said the hearing was conducted to the highest standards and that it should not be questioned.
The argument exposed a sharper friction than the final classification itself. Alpine had first succeeded in restoring Gasly to third place, only to lose that position again once the appeal panel ruled in favor of McLaren and Red Bull. For Gasly, the result was not just a reshuffle of numbers but a public climb back to the podium order, followed by another fall.
The unanswered point is not who moved where, but why the appeal panel rejected Alpine’s earlier win. The ruling changed the official Monaco GP order, but the reasoning around the wrongly measured pit lane and the later challenge is what will define whether this settles the matter or leaves more to be contested.
