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Briatore accuses FIA appeal judge of McLaren bias after Gasly loses Monaco podium

By Kavi Khandelwal

Flavio Briatore came out swinging at Monza on Friday, accusing a member of the FIA International Court of Appeal of bias toward McLaren just hours after the panel stripped Pierre Gasly of his Monaco Grand Prix podium.

The ruling reinstated two five-second penalties Gasly picked up for a pit lane speeding infringement back in June, one later traced to a timing-loop error on FOM's side. Alpine had used its right of review to get those penalties rescinded, restoring Gasly to third. Red Bull and McLaren pushed back, arguing that four other drivers hit with the same penalty never got the same chance to overturn theirs. The Court of Appeal sided with the two teams, dropping Gasly back to seventh, handing Red Bull's Isack Hadjar the final podium spot and moving Oscar Piastri up to fourth. Briatore, sitting beside Andrea Stella and Fred Vasseur for the team principals' press conference, opened by calling the outcome "very unfair" before pivoting straight to the panel itself. "We accept the decision," he said, "but what is very strange was four judges in the panel. One of the judges act like a prosecutor." His real complaint was about that judge's ties to McLaren: Filippo Marchino, who Briatore said had spoken at a McLaren event in Beverly Hills back in 2018, and whose charitable foundation had reportedly received donated McLaren cars. "It was quite unfair one of the judges was linked with a team which was processing us," he added. Asked to set the allegations aside and discuss the ruling itself, Stella welcomed the clarity it brought to how Article 1.1.1 of the FIA's International Sporting Code gets applied, calling it foundational to everything else in the code. He noted that every team, not just McLaren and Red Bull, turned up for the hearing because of how much was riding on the interpretation. Briatore wasn't interested in that framing. Pushed again, he doubled down, insisting the judge's independence was the only thing that mattered to him and waving off the sporting-regulation talk entirely. He didn't offer much beyond the Beverly Hills photo and the donated cars, but he made clear the accusation wasn't going away quietly, and stopped short of ruling out Alpine pursuing it further. McLaren's side of Friday's press conference told a different story. Stella is reported to have called Briatore's claims "insulting" to McLaren's reputation, warning that allegations of that seriousness made in public would need to be backed up. The bigger picture: Monaco's 2026 result has now been re-litigated twice, once when Alpine successfully argued the penalties should be dropped, and now with the Court of Appeal putting them back. Gasly himself addressed the fallout after FP2 at Monza, where he qualified 14th, a quiet footnote next to the storm Briatore kicked up a few seats along the row. Whether the allegation against Marchino goes any further is unclear. What's certain is that Briatore has picked a fight not just with a stewarding decision, but with the credibility of the body that made it, and McLaren isn't going to let that sit unanswered.