F1 News: Why FIA rules meant SIX penalties for ‘rookie error’ at Monaco Grand Prix

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Monaco Grand Prix

Why FIA rules meant SIX penalties for ‘rookie error’ at Monaco Grand Prix

A truly wild one at Monaco on Sunday

Chris Deeley

Monday 8 June 2026 16:30 Updated: 17:22

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Well that was weird.

Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix was a great one for fans of spreadsheets, with some kind of massive Excel master-doc needed to keep track of who'd been given which penalty – and in some cases, how many of them.

In the end, there were six penalties handed out over the course of the race just for the rookie error of speeding in the pitlane, with plenty of others littered through the field for things like track limits violations and...everything Sergio Perez did.

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The weird part? All of their teams involved in the speeding penalties are pretty adamant that the drivers involved got below 60km/h at the line.

F1 RESULTS: Monaco GP race times and positions

Why were there so many pitlane speeding penalties at the Monaco Grand Prix?

Here's the thing about the pitlane speed limit: it isn't a laser keeping track of every car's speed for every second of the time they're in the zone. At the timing lines etc, sure, but the best way to measure average speed is to measure the time it takes to get from one place to another and work it out from that.

That, in a nutshell, is what doomed George Russell, Pierre Gasly (twice), Franco Colapinto, Lewis Hamilton and Oscar Piastri.

The pitlane in Monaco can effectively be cut by a couple of meters, thanks to a little kink in the entrance. If you're going at your precisely dialled-in 60km/h and cut a couple of meters off your journey...yep, you're going to look like you were slightly over the limit. All five drivers were pinged for officially being just 0.1km/h over the limit. The margins could not have been finer.

How important were the penalties?

A couple of drivers got away fairly cleanly from under their penalties. Lewis Hamilton managed to serve his five-second penalty when the safety car came out for Lance Stroll's crash, keeping second place, while Oscar Piastri still managed a credible fourth place and...well, Franco Colapinto's may not have matter that much at all.

The others really mattered though. Mercedes managed to exacerbate George Russell's by not having him serve it when he pitted at that Stroll safety car, turning a five-second ding into a five-second ding and a drive-through penalty. The theoretical podium contender finished out of the points in 12th, widening the championship gap to team-mate Kimi Antonelli to 68 points.

The impact on Pierre Gasly may be the most heartbreaking though – the Alpine star jubilantly celebrating what he thought was his first podium since 2024 only to later discover that he'd been moved down to seventh by his penalties. His team are attempting to get a review on the Monaco GP.

Will the Monaco GP result be overturned?

In short? No. In slightly longer? Not a chance.

Teams and drivers were warned about the pitfalls of taking the minor shortcut, and when a penalty has the butterfly effect that Russell's had – causing a second penalty and having him finish out of the points entirely – it's hard for the decision-makers not to throw up their hands and say something along the lines of 'we told you about it, you still stuffed it up, and if we change one of these then we have to change them all...which we can't'.

What they said

McLaren team principal Andrea was reasonably philosophical, saying: “We think it might come from shortcutting too much. I think that's the hypothesis at the moment, so then we told Oscar to just avoid that.

“But initially it wasn't understood. We know that sometimes when you shortcut too much this may induce you to be measured in excess of the speed limiter. But we don't know more at the moment.”

Less philosophical was Gasly, saying to Sky Sports: "Right now honestly I'm just heartbroken. I don't have the words. I have too much emotions to process. I just can't get my head around what happened. It just doesn't sound fair.

"Triple checking with the team they set the right speed in the car. On both occasions, I've put the pit limiter way before the line.

"We're all working so hard for these moments. 10 years I do this, 10 years I've tried to grab every opportunity, I have five podiums, which is nothing in my career. And we pass the road in third position in front of all the French people and it gets taken away from us. Right now, I just don't know what to say.

"I hope they can have a look into it and just make the right decisions. As I say it from our side, I know I haven't done anything wrong and I was 200 per cent sure I was before the line. The team set the right speed from what they said, and hopefully they can investigate it.

"But it won't give me that moment. I've just been watching the podium and I definitely feel I should have been up there. The team will obviously fight it. It's nine points that we're losing, a podium. I have no idea."

George Russell blamed a 'software issue'.

And Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion and Monaco maestro? “Yeah, I wasn't speeding. I think it's just the way the pitlane is. I've done this pitlane for years. It's not like I came in and didn't press the button or something like that. Pitlane limiter is on immediately.

“I think it's just the line that you take, which is the same line we've all taken for years where you come in, you kind of cut part of the white line, head down, went out. And I was shocked to hear that I was speeding because I wasn't actually above the speed.

“I think it's the distance and something that we really need to look into because I heard lots of people got that today and they probably weren't really speeding.”

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F1 Lewis Hamilton FIA George Russell Monaco Grand Prix Pierre Gasly