Alpine always 'confident' Ocon rear wing would not fail

Otmar Szafnauer says Alpine never had any doubts over the integrity of Esteban Ocon's rear wing in the Canadian Grand Prix, despite the element's worrying oscillation in the closing stages of the race.

Ocon was engaged in a tight four-car battle in the final 15 laps of the race in Montreal, the Frenchman chasing the Williams of Alex Albon for P7 while holding off Alfa Romeo's Valtteri Bottas and then McLaren's Lando Norris.

When the latter found himself running in the wake of the Alpine with just seven laps to go, Norris radioed his team to signal that the Alpine's unsteady rear wing - which was visible on the A523's rearward facing TV camera -  was a safety hazard.

F1's regulations state that it's a team's responsibility to deem whether a piece of bodywork or an element is unsafe. Szafnauer explained why Alpine had no concerns over the wing's safety.

"Hindsight is a wonderful thing," he said, quoted by Motorsport.com.

"It didn't fail. So it stayed on. We designed that wing and we manufacture it. So that failure mode was probably most familiar to us. And we were happy that it wasn't going to come off.

"We test for that in R&D, so we put it through those tests, just because of the way it's mounted, and we, therefore see those types of modes and understand if it's going to come off or not.

"So we're happy that with all the testing that we do, it wasn't."

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Szafnauer said the Alpine pitwall was also in communication with the FIA over the matter.

"We talked about it, and the FIA came to us as well and said it looks like your rear wing's moving, and we looked at it and talked about it," he added.

"We were confident that with a couple of laps left that it was going to be fine."

Ocon was ultimately unable to mount a proper attack on Albon, but Szafnauer was convinced the Frenchman would have preceded the Williams driver at the checkered if he had followed the latter's bold medium-to-hard one stop strategy.

"Williams did one less stop than we did," noted the American. "And it was difficult to predict if the tyre was going to make it to the end.

"And I think Williams had nothing to lose. Had they stopped, they wouldn't have been in the points. We did stop.

"And in the end, we're probably, I don't know, six to seven tenths of a lap quicker than him. With that seven-tenths and DRS and their strategy of low drag, we couldn't overtake them.

"Looking back at it now and just seeing what they did, we would have done the same and made it, and would have been a couple of places ahead."

On the other side of the Alpine garage, it was another unlucky day for Pierre Gasly whose early lap 10 switch from mediums to hards and its potential benefit were undone by the Safety Car that followed.

"Pierre was compromised because we pitted him early for clean air because he had good underlying pace, and then the safety car came out," explained Szafnauer.

"So once that happened with everyone pitting, and pitting in less time, his race was compromised."

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