Red Bull and McLaren to appeal Monaco GP result change | F1 | Sport
But that decision did not go down well with other teams and three teams, Red Bull, their junior outfit Racing Bulls and McLaren all spoke in the hearing to argue against Alpine’s case. And now the stewards’ decision to find in the Enstone team’s favour is set to be appealed by multiple rivals.
As reported by Motorsport.com, it’s understood Red Bull and McLaren have notified the FIA that they intend to appeal the decision. They have the right to do so under Article 15 of the International Sporting Code and also within the FIA’s Judicial and Disciplinary Rules.
The only condition a team has to meet in order to make an appeal is that they have to notify the FIA that they plan to do so within one hour of the stewards’ decision being announced. Red Bull and McLaren have both done that, though it does not mean that they will definitely follow through with a full appeal.
But by notifying the FIA of their intention to appeal, McLaren and Red Bull have bought themselves an extra 96 hours to properly go through the stewards’ decision and see if they think they can find grounds for the ruling to be overturned.
There is an obvious incentive for both teams to follow through with that if they think they can make a strong enough case. By reinstating Gasly’s third-place finish in Monaco, Isack Hadjar was stripped of his first podium as a Red Bull driver and demoted to fourth place, scoring three fewer world championship points. Oscar Piastri was fourth and now fifth in the classification in Monaco, and so he and McLaren are two points down.
McLaren and Red Bull’s involvement in the hearing itself on Thursday made for one of the more eye-catching sections of a lengthy and detailed document put out by the FIA in which the stewards confirmed their decision to find in Alpine’s favour. It revealed that Stephen Knowles, Red Bull’s head of sporting matters, spoke in the hearing to argue that timing in the pit lane was consistent, that the usual process was followed and that teams knew in advance of the ‘imperfection’ of the method used to calculate the speed of cars entering the pits.
And Will Courtenay, who started work as McLaren’s sporting director this year having been recruited from Red Bull, backed up that final point in particular while also pointing out that teams tell their drivers how to manage that issue.
