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Otmar Szafnauer, the Chief Operating Officer at Force India has defended the tactics used by Force India during the Canadian Grand Prix. Near the end of the race, Esteban Ocon was pressing the team to be let past teammate Sergio Perez so he could challenge Daniel Ricciardo for a podium position.
However, the swap never happened as Perez was not inclined to move over for his teammate. Szafnauer says that he knew Ricciardo was coming up onto some traffic and wanted to attempt to use the slow cars as a way to get past.
"We talked about swapping them around earlier but Sergio wanted time to try and overtake when Ricciardo was coming up to lapped traffic," he explained. "We agreed to that and while we gave them that time to catch up, the Ferraris caught us, and by that time you can't swap them because it takes two to three seconds to swap them.
"The question is was that pace [from Ocon] enough to overtake Ricciardo? And you don't know the answer to that. Had it been enough then yeah, swap them, but if it isn't you've got to swap them and then swap them back and you're worse off. So it's a fine line. Had we known 100% we would have done - but we didn't know that."
Fergal Walsh
Azerbaijan Grand Prix
C. Sainz jr
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I would have loved to have seen Ocon try