The 77 centimetres that took a podium away.

Gasly crossed the line P3. Then the timing screens said otherwise.

Pierre Gasly drove a flawless race to third. But race control flagged him twice for pit lane speeding — by +0.1 and +0.4 km/h.

He wasn’t alone. Hamilton, Piastri and Colapinto were flagged too — and Russell took a drive-through, P4 → P13. In practice: Russell, Antonelli, Albon, Alonso. Every violation within 0.5 km/h of the limit.

There is no speed gun. Nothing is read from the car.

Two timing loops are buried in the asphalt. As the car passes, each loop detects its FIA transponder and stamps a time — t₁ at loop 1, t₂ at loop 2.

The clock is microsecond-precise. But d isn’t measured live — the system has to be told how far apart the loops are. The speed is only as right as that one number.

The system was told the wrong distance.

Every car’s pit lane speed was computed against a distance 77 cm longer than reality — inflating every reading by ×1.0294, about 3% too fast.

It got worse: near pit exit, by the Cadillac hospitality, drivers cutting the fast-lane line drove an even shorter path than the system assumed.

Watch a legal car get convicted.

The car crosses the loops at a true 58.4 km/h — comfortably legal. Over the real 26.15 m, that takes 1.612 s.

A car under the limit, flagged over it. Same physics, wrong constant.

Alpine appealed. FOM re-measured. The math flipped.

FOM’s admission of the distance error was accepted as “new, significant and relevant evidence” — the bar a right of review must clear.

“Car 10 exceeded the speed limit of 60 km/h in the pitlane. We determine that it did not.” — FIA Stewards, final decision