Williams Boss Backs McLaren and Red Bull’s Challenge to Gasly’s Monaco Podium Reinstatement

James Vowles has waded into the Monaco pit lane controversy with a clear position: he’s surprised the FIA reinstated Pierre Gasly‘s podium, and he’d back McLaren and Red Bull in their push to undo it.

The Williams team principal was speaking with Sky Sports F1’s Natalie Pinkham in Barcelona when the full Q&A laid out exactly where he stands.

Gasly had crossed the line third in Monaco, only to be handed two separate five-second time penalties for pit lane speeding that dropped him to seventh.

Evidence later surfaced that a measurement discrepancy at the pit lane entry meant Gasly and four other drivers had been incorrectly flagged for exceeding the 60 km/h limit.

Alpine pushed for a right of review, the stewards agreed, and Gasly’s podium was restored.

Vowles, whose own driver wasn’t directly affected by the result swap, nonetheless offered an explanation of how teams actually manage pit lane speed. Asked by Pinkham for his take, he went deep:

“Here’s my view on it. It’s not the first time. Singapore, I don’t know if people remember a while back – I wasn’t at the team, it was a different team back then – but exactly the same thing happened where… what happens is you can shortcut the pit lane. If you get onboard [camera angle], you’ll see they’re not driving in the white lines, they’re driving across the white lines, so you shorten the distance.

“If you look back as well at Monaco, we received a speeding fine on Friday, and we had a look into it like, ‘Ah, this is what’s happened,’ and tuned down our pit limiter as a result of it, because that is the regulation. What you do is, however they set it, you’re aware of the fact that no one tunes their car pit speed limiter to 60 km/h. It’s always below that in function to how you drive. My advice to anyone is drive the way you’re going to drive on Friday, Saturday, the way you’re going to drive on Sunday. Don’t change your line, which is what catches you out.”

Haas team boss Ayao Komatsu made a similar argument, noting that the large majority of F1’s 22-car grid managed to get through the race without alleged speeding violations – implying driver and team behaviour, not a broken system, was the differentiating factor. Vowles is essentially agreeing.

The Real Problem Is What Happens to George Russell and Oscar Piastri

Where Vowles gets genuinely uncomfortable is over the domino effect the reinstatement creates.

“I’m surprised we have the reinstatement being frank about it. It doesn’t really affect us personally; he was ahead of us whichever way you do that. Obviously, it’s a championship position. I think it’s more it creates a bit of a mess now. What do you do with George? What do you do with Piastri in those same circumstances who should have then been on the podium as a result? That’s the mess that I don’t feel comfortable about.”

Russell was one of five drivers – Ferrari‘s Lewis Hamilton, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, and Alpine team-mates Franco Colapinto and Gasly – who collected five-second time penalties for pit lane speeding during the Monaco race.

Russell’s race unravelled further when Mercedes failed to serve his sanction correctly, which led to a more severe penalty – and in-race penalties of that kind cannot be retrospectively undone by stewards.

That asymmetry is exactly what Vowles is flagging: one driver gets his result corrected, the others don’t, and the sporting outcome becomes incoherent.

McLaren and Red Bull have both filed notices of their intention to appeal. For Red Bull, the motive is obviously Gasly’s restoration drops Isack Hadjar from third to fourth. For McLaren, Oscar Piastri moves back to fifth.

Both teams lodged their notifications within the one-hour window available, and now have a further 96 hours – until Tuesday afternoon – to file an official appeal.

Pinkham put it to Vowles that both teams had already signalled they might challenge the decision.

“For a good reason. I would support them in that, absolutely,” he confirmed.

Williams has no skin in the podium fight itself, which makes Vowles’s position all the more credible. When a team principal with nothing to gain says the reinstatement created a mess, it’s a genuine verdict on a process that answered one injustice while leaving several others unresolved. The FIA now faces pressure from a large number of people in the paddock.