diff --git a/build/Dockerfile.ci b/build/Dockerfile.ci
index b76fb42ae4..2f63891f1d 100644
--- a/build/Dockerfile.ci
+++ b/build/Dockerfile.ci
@@ -10,13 +10,6 @@ WORKDIR /build/
 # dos2unix is needed to build CNI plugins
 RUN yum install -y dos2unix
 
-# Download client binaries
-# TODO: Remove this, see https://issues.redhat.com/browse/WINC-520 
-RUN curl -L -s https://mirror.openshift.com/pub/openshift-v4/clients/ocp/4.6.4/openshift-client-linux-4.6.4.tar.gz -o openshift-origin-client-tools.tar.gz \
-    && echo "c1f39a966fc0dbd4f8f0bfec0196149d54e0330de523bf906bbe2728b10a860b openshift-origin-client-tools.tar.gz" | sha256sum -c \
-    && tar -xzf openshift-origin-client-tools.tar.gz \
-    && rm -rf ./{kubectl,openshift*,README.md}
-
 # The source here corresponds to the code in the PR and is placed here by the CI infrastructure.
 WORKDIR /build/windows-machine-config-operator/
 # Copy .git metadata so that we can generate the version for the WMCO binary
@@ -174,10 +167,6 @@ ENV OPERATOR=/usr/local/bin/windows-machine-config-operator \
 # jq is needed in e2e test script to count the number of data items in the windows-instances ConfigMap
 RUN yum install -y jq
 
-# Install client binaries
-COPY --from=build /build/oc /usr/bin/oc
-RUN oc version
-
 # Copy the source code to be used by our ci infra
 WORKDIR /go/src/github.com/openshift/windows-machine-config-operator/
 COPY --from=build /build/windows-machine-config-operator .
diff --git a/hack/run-ci-e2e-test.sh b/hack/run-ci-e2e-test.sh
index 67ee43afc8..3bfb25bfa5 100755
--- a/hack/run-ci-e2e-test.sh
+++ b/hack/run-ci-e2e-test.sh
@@ -3,6 +3,17 @@ set -o errexit
 set -o nounset
 set -o pipefail
 
+# This script depends on the oc client. In CI, the oc cli is injected according
+# to the given OCP version. See https://github.com/openshift/release/pull/26395
+# ensure oc client is available
+which oc || {
+  # fails otherwise
+  echo "cannot find oc binary in PATH"
+  exit 1
+}
+# print oc client version
+oc version
+
 # If ARTIFACT_DIR is not set, create a temp directory for artifacts
 ARTIFACT_DIR=${ARTIFACT_DIR:-}
 if [ -z "$ARTIFACT_DIR" ]; then