McLaren seek answers over Alpine’s wobbly rear wing Norris called “dangerous"

Ocon’s rear wing was seen moving in dramatic fashion during his battle against McLaren’s Lando Norris in the closing stages of Sunday’s 70-lap race in Montreal, leading to the Briton voicing safety concerns over team radio. 

“The rear wing is loose on the Alpine,” Norris reported. “It’s going to fall off at some point, that thing’s pretty dangerous. It’s very loose.”

He added: “If this falls off it could hit someone. It’s going to be extremely bad.”

Ocon was allowed to finish the race and did not receive the black-and-orange flag, used to inform a driver that their car has mechanical problems which are likely to pose a danger to themselves or others. 

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said the FIA is putting the onus onto teams to determine whether their cars are safe to run or not.  

“The race direction now leaves the duty of care to the teams,” Stella said. “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 teams, when they are in a competition, you have a conflict of interest in terms of safety of everyone involved and maximising your result.

“I think this is a debate that will deserve more time and I’m sure that the next Sporting Advisory Committee it will be raised again. Because Lando said a couple of times that it is not nice when you follow a car with a wobbling rear wing and this may hit you, and kind of nothing happens.”

Stella added: “We will certainly make a question as to what was their thinking in terms of how safe the situation was today.”

Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer stressed his side were confident that the component wasn’t going to fail. 

"It didn't fail, so it stayed on,” Szafnauer said. “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."