Gasly stalled due to error in reserve steering wheel

During FP1 of the Canada GP, Pierre Gasly stalled. It involved an error message from his steering wheel. Remarkably, it was his spare steering wheel he was using at the time.

Alpine has both drivers drive at least one lap with the spare steering wheel every weekend to check reliability. That the team does so appears to be for good reason. During FP1 in Canada, it was precisely because of the spare steering wheel that things went wrong for Gasly. The Frenchman stalled because of an error message.

Alpine checks not unnecessary

Team boss Otmar Szafnauer said after Friday's race: "We always do. We run the spare steering wheels on both cars and the reason we run them is to make sure that they're functioning because the rest of the weekend we don't run them unless they're needed as a spare.."

"And look and behold," Szafnauer continued. "We had an electronics issue within the steering wheel on Pierre's car and once we got it back and put the non-spare wheel on it it was all okay. So we've got to understand what bit of the electronics failed within the steering wheel."