COTA’s bumps were “on the limit” for F1 car reliability - Ocon

In the wake of safety concerns raised by MotoGP’s riders, some areas of the COTA circuit were smoothed out ahead of United States GP, but that didn’t stop complaints from drivers last weekend. 

Red Bull was forced to change Max Verstappen’s rear wing before qualifying after discovering a hairline crack, while both Ocon and Alpine teammate Esteban Ocon had to retire from the Austin race with issues at the rear-end of their cars. 

And Ocon thinks more work needs to be done to the track before F1 returns. 

“I think they are on the limit for reliability,” Ocon said of the bumps. “I think a little bit more if we come back next year and it has a step in that direction, I think the cars will really start to face issues. 

“When you go slow it’s not a big problem, but once you go fast it’s big hits on the floor and on the suspension. The engineers are seeing red alarms in high loads and that’s not something that we should see. 

“So I think the track needs some work for next year.” 

Pierre Gasly also suffered a suspension failure on his AlphaTauri car in the race that he suspected could have been caused by the bumps. 

Mercedes F1 team boss Toto Wolff admitted that the team modified Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas’s cars to avoid a “massacre” on the worst of Austin’s bumps. 

“The car was bottoming out quite heavy, and that breaks the car,” Wolff explained. 

“So we took some mitigating steps to not break it, or massacre it that hard, in order to survive the race. 

"Definitely a compromise for going faster on the track, but maybe a necessity to actually finish.”

However, not every team encountered issues over the course of the US Grand Prix weekend. 

“The drivers didn’t complain,” said Haas team principal Guenther Steiner. “They said they were at the limit of the bumps as what is acceptable. 

“But there was never a concern over the reliability of the car or the suspension of the car.” 

McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl also said his drivers had “nothing outstanding” to report back regarding the bumps. 

“Personally I have to say I like it also that we have these challenges with the bumps, because it gives these tracks a certain characteristic,” he added. 

“A lot of drivers also commented that they actually like the additional challenge, which makes it even more tricky to put the fast laps in. 

“So nothing negative to comment from the bumps we have seen here this weekend.”