A bittersweet taste in AlpineDespite Gasly securing the podium finish, he said: "I would have preferred that podium moment rather than the points."

Although the French team is pleased to have won its case following the cancellation of Pierre Gasly's penalties in Monaco, it regrets not having been able to experience this moment by going directly to collect the trophy.

This is a landmark decision… and one that will cause quite a stir: Pierre Gasly inherited third place in the Monaco Grand Prix by default, nearly five days after the race on the Rock. At that time, car number 10 had crossed the finish line in third position before two five-second penalties were added to his total time for two speeding offenses in the pit lane.

Informed by his race engineer, Pierre Gasly struggled to hide his frustration and immense disappointment, even going so far as to call it "the worst day of his career" upon arriving in Barcelona. Fortunately, some good news brightened the Frenchman's Friday morning before Free Practice 1: following a protest lodged by AlpineHe regains his podium position and is reclassified in third place, causing [the team] to fall Isaac Hadjar from the podium.

A decision that pleases us Alpinewhose complaint has borne fruit. But for Steve Nielsen, the CEO of the A-list, this does not erase everything. "If I could choose, I would have preferred that podium moment to the points.", the Briton assured the media present on site, including AUTOhebdo. "That's something we can never get back. It's a shame for Pierre and it's a shame for the team. We recovered as much as possible, the position and the points, which is good, but if I could choose, I would take the emotion of the podium, which we can never get back."

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Steve Nielsen and Alpine had identified the problem with the pit lane speed radar. "We knew there had been problems on that section of the track on Friday and Saturday. So we already had our doubts, and we had warned our drivers."Nielsen explains. “And when we started seeing all these penalties handed out during the race, without knowing exactly what the mistake was, it wasn’t unreasonable to think something was wrong. I’ve been doing this job for a few years now, and over the course of a season, you might see one, two, four, five pit lane speeding penalties. To see six penalties in a single afternoon, combined with what we knew from Friday and Saturday, it couldn’t be a coincidence. Once we knew there was definitely something wrong, we were very confident.”

Trust paid off for Alpine, who thanks the FIA ​​and the Formula 1 for their transparency and speed. However, a question arises: what about the other drivers who were also penalized and who had already served their penalties? This particularly concerns George Russell, who lost a lot in the process by not scoring a single point. “It’s their decision, I can’t comment on how they operate. We were perhaps lucky not to be the first to receive the penalty, and we had already served our pit stop. I really sympathize. For George Russell, for example, we’ll never really know. I don’t know how we could unravel it. It’s a really unfortunate situation. In our case, it was relatively simple to overturn since everything had been added after the race. But for them… And besides, speeding in the pit lane isn’t normally subject to appeal, which is why we used the review procedure.” Now, minds can turn to Barcelona, ​​the seventh match of the season.

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