Esteban Ocon says he will be taking greater precautions to protecting his health over the season in 2024.
Many drivers and team staff suffered from the demands of the schedule towards the end of last season. Ocon suffered from a fever at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, which resulted in him missing his Thursday media duties.
At the time, Ocon pointed to the unusual scheduling of the previous event of the Las Vegas Grand Prix held a week prior as likely contributing to his illness. He also expressed his concerns over the 2024 F1 calendar, which features a record 24 rounds, suggesting that the human body was ‘not designed for that’.
Speaking to media including RaceFans at the launch of Alpine’s new A524 at Enstone, Ocon said he will be applying lessons he learned last season to protect himself better in 2024.
“I will do something very different, that’s clear,” Ocon said. “I got quite unlucky with the Las Vegas events.
“Obviously we were meeting a lot of people in that weekend and we didn’t see the sunlight for four or five days. So it was quite hard and everyone got sick, 80% of the paddock probably got sick at the time.
“But yes, I’m going to be doing things very differently this year. I’ve been sick enough this winter, so that I got all my immune system ready for the year. So I’ve been training well, I’m going to be back in my training centre every day in between races, limiting most of the things that should not happen and focus on the races.”
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Ocon says Alpine are placing much greater emphasis on their team’s endurance this year due to the expected demands from Formula 1’s longest ever season.
“You guys are going to see how much change there is out of our garages, our hospitality and that’s transformed all the different departments there is,” he said.
“We’ve created some new departments for healthcare inside the team, mental health as well, that’s very important. For the 24 races scheduled we need to have everyone at 100%. It’s going to be very busy.”
Alpine head into their new season with a newly-confirmed permanent team principal in Bruno Famin as they look to gain ground on the top teams ahead of them in last year’s championship. Ocon says the team are already changing some of their processes for the better.
“I’ll give you an example – last year we took more than half a day to do a seat fit and things were not perfect still arriving to…
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