Gasly was restored to third in the final Monaco Grand Prix classification after Alpine successfully overturned the two five-second pit lane speeding penalties that had initially dropped him to seventh after the race.
The decision came after Formula One Management acknowledged an error in the pit lane distance measurement used to calculate speeds at Monaco, leading stewards to rescind both of Gasly’s penalties.
However, the ruling has created a complicated situation for several drivers who were penalised for the same issue during the race and served those penalties before the chequered flag.
Piastri was among them, with the McLaren driver making an additional stop to serve his five-second penalty.
That allowed Gasly to finish ahead of him on the road, before the Alpine driver was later reinstated to the podium.
“I’m pretty mind-blown by the decision,” Piastri said in Barcelona.
“When other people have been penalised for the same thing and served a penalty in the race, how you can then change one penalty, knowing that at least five or six other racers have been impacted by that, is astonishing.
“I’ve obviously lost the position, but I can only imagine how George is feeling. I could not believe my eyes.
“I lost the position to Pierre because I served the penalty. Technically I should be P3, but then technically George should be P3.
“The whole thing is now a mess. It’s quite the predicament they’ve got themselves into.
“I don’t know how you get yourself out of that one, because now the precedent as it is, is you don’t serve the penalty, you take it to court, wait probably a few months to decide the race, and who the hell wants to go racing like that? Perplexed is the word I would use.”
George Russell’s race was also heavily affected by the same Monaco controversy, with the Mercedes driver handed a five-second penalty for pit lane speeding before receiving a drive-through for failing to serve it correctly.
That dropped Russell out of the points after he had been running in podium contention, leaving Mercedes to explore whether there is any possible remedy in light of Alpine’s successful case.
Mercedes has since initiated a right of review procedure over Russell’s result, arguing the Gasly ruling and the confirmed measurement error amount to new evidence.
“On the Gasly thing, yes, we’ve asked for a right of review because we just simply want to sit on the table when decisions are being made,” Toto Wolff said.
The Mercedes team principal had earlier admitted the team had been speaking to lawyers about its options, while conceding the chances of changing Russell’s result were slim.
“I just left when we were on the phone with our lawyers to look at what we can do for George,” Wolff said.
“Do we think that we realistically have a chance of reverting the result? I don’t think so.
“But we definitely have to give it a go if we see that there is a millimetre of chance to do so and bring him back to whatever it was before we’d calculated P3 or P4.”
McLaren and Red Bull also lodged notices of intention to appeal the stewards’ decision during the Barcelona weekend, giving both teams 96 hours to decide whether to proceed with a formal appeal.
That deadline is set to expire on Tuesday morning European time.
Discussion about this post