Alpine reveals issue fix ahead of Ocon's maiden win

Alpine executive director Marcin Budkowski has revealed a "small issue" on Esteban Ocon's suspension could have been behind the Frenchman's pre-Hungary slump.

Prior to securing his maiden F1 victory at the Hungaroring, Ocon endured a tough run of races and had failed to score at four consecutive races before finishing ninth at Silverstone.

After outperforming team-mate Fernando Alonso at each of the first five races, the second run of five was dominated by the Spaniard as the tables turned with qualifying, in particular, a struggle for Ocon.

"It's fair to say we didn't know what the issue was, whether there was an issue with the car, but the combination of the driver plus car wasn't delivering," explained Budkowski. "That was clear.

"So we took the decision to change as many things as we could on the car because if you don't have a clue and you can change some parts, why wouldn't you?

"We've changed the chassis, we've done some tests and we haven't seen anything untoward in terms of rigidity of the things you would get normally if a chassis has an issue.

"We did find a small issue, a front suspension element. It was fairly minor but some of the things it would have provoked were some of the symptoms Esteban was describing.

"Whether it was worth all the lap time as such, I don't think it was, but the reality is with these kinds of things, if you have something small that is disturbing the driver, and as a result, he loses confidence, then it could be a few tenths he is losing on top of that."

Despite discovering this potential reason for Ocon's run of disappointing results, Budkowski conceded: "I can't give you a full answer because we don't really know.

"But we did find something that was a bit abnormal, and the combination of making these changes and Esteban regaining confidence in the car, he then bounced back to a level of competitiveness, and that's what matters going forward."

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