Esteban Ocon arrived in Montreal last weekend after some recent positivity. His Alpine A523 is now perhaps where the team expected it should have been at the start of the season and had a run of 3 points finishes in a row along with a podium in Monaco, a weekend where he was very strong indeed in the run up to his visit to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
Though his teammate, Pierre Gasly had to bail out of his flying lap in qualifying after taking action to avoid a slow moving Carlos Sainz, Ocon managed to qualify P6 in the wet conditions on Saturday.
A decent reaction off the line saw him pass the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg and slipped into 4th following George Russell’s collision with the barriers. Pitting under the safety car for the hard compound tyre cost him track position to both Ferrari’s and the Red Bull of Sergio Perez who had all opted to stay out. In the latter stages of the race the French driver stopped once more, coming out behind the Williams of Alex Albon, who, in a race where he showed great pace, was running a one-stop and proved to be impossible to pass, with a “train” soon forming behind him.
In the final few laps of the Grand Prix, Lando Norris was right on the tail of the Alpine driver and reported what everyone watching the TV feed could see – that Ocon’s rear wing was vibrating violently under load and looked rather unsafe.
Despite this, Ocon managed to come home in eighth, with Norris’ behind. After the race, when asked to comment on the result, he had the following to say:
“Happy to be in the points again, but we were fourth before all the rounds of stops. So, we need to review what happened, why we lost to all the other cars after the stops.”
The 26-year-old also pointed out the straight line speed of Albon’s Williams and why it proved to be a stubborn opponent:
“We ended up unfortunately behind Alex. It was good racing, but you can’t pass them. Doesn’t matter what car you have; their straight-line speed is really dangerous. We can’t try and do any moves.”
On the subject of his shaky rear wing, he was quick to deflect the possibility of any failure or safety issue:
“Carbon deflects massively. We see it with planes, we see it with Formula 1 cars, with front wings in general, and our rear wing has been moving since the beginning of the year. We need to see if that was a bit more than usual, to see if we were losing some downforce from that. But I don’t think there were any issues with that.”
Though perhaps his result may not reflect the pace inherent in both car and driver last weekend, it seems like Alpine are making steps in the right direction.
