Gasly gets Monaco trophy but appeals yet to be heard

SPIELBERG, Austria, June 25 : Red Bull's Isack Hadjar has finally handed over the Monaco Grand Prix third-place trophy to Alpine's Pierre Gasly even though the result remains subject to appeal nearly three weeks after the chequered flag.

Frenchman Gasly finished third on the road in the Mediterranean principality but was then demoted to seventh when two five-second penalties for pit lane speeding were applied by stewards post-race.

That decision was overturned days later, after stewards accepted that there had been a timekeeping error, with McLaren and Red Bull appealing to the governing FIA's international court while Mercedes sought a review before withdrawing the request.

"Looks good in my home. It looks good in the cabinet. No, obviously, you know, happy to get it back," said Gasly ahead of this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix.

Hadjar, joining the Frenchman in a press conference at the Spielberg circuit, said he was also happy to hand it over to Gasly. "At least to give it to my friend and not someone else. So at least that’s the good part," he added.

Hadjar had celebrated on the podium on June 7 and got to spray the champagne after what amounted to a home race.

McLaren's Oscar Piastri, who dropped from fourth to fifth after Gasly's reinstatement, said he had nothing against the driver or Alpine but there were still important questions to be answered for the good of the sport.

"If we had known that certain things had played out the way they did, we would have made different decisions in the race, which we don’t really think is correct. So yeah, we’ll see what happens out of it," the Australian said of the appeal.

Piastri said he had never seen a race with so many penalties for pitlane speeding and he took his during the race under the assumption that it could not be changed even though he knew he had not been going too fast.

"I think the risk that we have now is anytime a team or a driver feels that a penalty is potentially wrong or they have a chance of changing it, you go through this whole saga where we still don’t officially know the results of the race a month later, which I think is the biggest thing," said the McLaren driver.

"It also sets a bit of a tricky precedent because you could just end up with everybody not serving their penalties and then arguing about it for weeks after, which is not what anyone wants to see."

The FIA has yet to set a date for the appeal hearing.