Monaco pitlane – A run of speeding penalties during the Monaco Grand Prix left several drivers nursing costly mistakes—none more so than Pierre Gasly, who lost a podium finish. The reason, teams say and officials likely see, comes down to how drivers take a slightly different
On a track where every meter feels expensive, Monaco turned the pitlane into a trap.
Five-second penalties for speeding in the pitlane landed hard during the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix. and they didn’t just shuffle the running order—they erased momentum. turned clean races into damage-limiting weekends. and left drivers staring at the kind of margins that are almost impossible to feel in the moment. Second-place runner Lewis Hamilton was one of the drivers hit, and championship contender George Russell was another.
Pierre Gasly. Oscar Piastri. and Franco Colapinto were the other three drivers to receive five-second time penalties for speeding in the pitlane. For Gasly. the setback came in two separate blows: he picked up a second penalty for speeding again when he was running through the pitlane behind the safety car after a crash for Lance Stroll at the final corner.
The week had already shown the problem in miniature. In practice, four drivers picked up penalties for speeding by 0.5km/h or less. Russell again appeared among them, along with Kimi Antonelli, Alex Albon, and Fernando Alonso. That pattern mattered. It suggested this wasn’t a reckless day on the pit entry—it was something more mechanical. more about where the car sat than how hard the driver pushed the throttle.
Late in the grand prix. Alex Albon was warned that several drivers were receiving penalties and that it was related to “cutting the line around the Cadillac area”. Cadillac is positioned at the end of the pitlane. This year. the layout is slightly more open than when it was funnelled more tightly by barriers on both sides. and that openness appears to have encouraged drivers to cut the white line that denotes the fast lane—something described as being done at both ends of the pits here.
From a regulatory perspective, cutting that line is allowed. But the catch sits inside how pitlane speed is measured in F1. Instead of using a camera or a gun, the FIA uses electronic timing loops and FIA transponders. The car passes over multiple loops, and the system calculates speed from the time taken to travel the measured distance.
And that is where a small positional choice can become a big penalty. Because the fast lane is used to calculate the pitlane distance. a marginally too aggressive cut of the line would shorten the distance the system is measuring. A car travelling at exactly 60km/h could then complete the measured distance slightly too quickly for how it should be calculated—leaving it fractionally over the speed limit. That’s how you get penalties based on the kind of tiny margins seen in practice.
It also helps explain why teams were talking about it before anyone paid the full price. It is understood the issue was discussed between teams and the FIA during the weekend, and some drivers were even warned before the race to be careful of their positioning down the pitlane.
The race consequences arrived immediately, and they rippled through the top 10. Russell. who had been running fourth. failed to serve his penalty correctly at a double-stacked Mercedes stop under the safety car. For that, he was awarded a drivethrough penalty. By the time he served it after a late restart bunched the field up, he finished down in 13th.
Russell insisted the fault wasn’t his: he said Mercedes had told him “there was nothing I did wrong” and added there was a “software issue”.
Gasly’s situation was even crueler. He finished third on the road. but his brace of penalties reshaped his day: an additional 10 seconds dropped him from third to seventh. It wasn’t the kind of loss that can be explained away with one mistake—he was near-disconsolate post race. and the numbers behind his offences underline how close the line was. Gasly was 0.1km/h over the 60km/h limit on one of his two offences and 0.4km/h over on the other.
Post-race, Gasly indicated Alpine would be speaking to the FIA about the issue. In Monaco. where the margin between glory and frustration can be measured in seconds. the pitlane has become the newest place where the outcome can turn on something as subtle as how a driver chooses to cut through a line near the Cadillac area.
Monaco Grand Prix pitlane speeding penalties Pierre Gasly Lewis Hamilton George Russell FIA timing loops Cadillac area Franco Colapinto Oscar Piastri Lance Stroll
Monaco is basically tiny jail for race cars.
So they got fined for speeding but it’s because they cut a line? Like couldn’t they just not be in that spot? Sounds like a setup problem more than driver error.
I swear Monaco penalties are always about some weird “track geometry” thing. If it’s behind the safety car then why even count it as speeding, you’re barely moving anyway. Also Cadillac area? I thought Cadillac was a brand, not a turn lol.
This reads like they were watching the pitlane like hawks and ticketing everyone for existing wrong. If Hamilton got hit too then that tells me the rule is too strict or the line is poorly marked. I mean Gasly losing a podium over a “trap” line cut feels wild. They should just measure GPS speed and be done, not this cut-the-line thing.