McLaren not happy with FIA after loose rear wing Ocon in Canadian GP

It was a remarkable sight in the Canadian Grand Prix: Esteban Ocon did everything he could to keep Lando Norris behind him, but he did so with a wobbly rear wing. McLaren finds it extraordinary that Ocon was allowed to continue driving as normal and was not brought in by race control for safety reasons.

Last season, we regularly saw the meatball flag being waved, a sign that a part is (too) loose and needs to be fixed in the pit lane. We saw the flag several times, even at times when it may not have been necessary. The teams and the FIA agreed to drastically relax the policy, but the Ocon incident is perhaps the other extreme again.

"Race direction now leaves the duty of care to the teams. It’s the team’s call to say ‘We should retire the car’ or ‘We should leave the car out’. It’s a tricky one because the teams, when they are in a competition, have a conflict of interest in terms of the safety of everyone involved and maximising their result," Andrea Stella is quoted by Speedcafe.com.

McLaren had acted differently to Alpine

The McLaren team boss will put the issue on the agenda at the next Sporting Advisory Committee. "You need to know the construction of your car. You need to assess what’s wrong, and then you need to wonder ‘Have I put out my car and my components in this condition?’. Very likely, the answer is ‘No, we didn’t’. So it comes down to a sense of responsibility which every team can interpret in a different way."

Stella wants to talk to the FIA to see what the rationale was for their decision not to bring Ocon in to fix the problem or take him out of the race if the rear wing could not be fixed.