Alpine driver Esteban Ocon says he's dedicating all his time to improving his Formula 1 performances, at the cost of having 'no life' outside the sport at present as he prepares for a crucial 2023 season.
The 26-year-old Frenchman claimed his maiden Formula 1 victory in 2021 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, but didn't manage to repeat that level of success this season.
Even so he finished the season in eighth place in the drivers championship, overtaking his team mate Fernando Alonso in the standings who'd the upper-hand the previous year, and picking up 18 points more than his last campaign..
Some of that can be put down to Alonso suffering a string of reliability issues during 2022 while Ocon's season was relatively trouble-free. But Ocon also says that a new focus on F1 to the exclusion of all else was a factor, too.
“It’s not a secret that we’ve been working with my physio since last year," he told The Race of his extensive preparations.
Last year Ocon bolstered his personal off-track team by hiring a new physio, Tom Clark, and this year has added Michel Berthelemot to deal with PR.
"Overall [that] makes it a very strong team," he said. “It has helped me on a lot of different details, just keep energy throughout the year.
"But also my training centre, which my physio communicates with in France, has moved from the Pyrenees to Annecy. I live quite close to that place so I can basically [attend] training camp between races."
Ocon added that the move was one of the "little details that I needed to step up".
"I spend every day flat out working. But I feel a lot stronger, and I feel like I’ve kept a lot more energy than during last year, even though it’s a season more condensed and a season where we finish earlier.”
But such an effort inevitably came with a cost: "So no life, I would say!" he laughed.
Alonso has now departed Enstone for Aston Martin, with Alpine recruiting fellow French driver Pierre Gasly for 2023 to make it an all-Gaul operation.
Ocon and Gasly were childhood friends but subsequently fell out, leaving many onlookers wondering how their new partnership will play out next year. But Ocon isn't worried and remains focussed on what the pair can achieve together.
“The team is happy with the job I’m doing at the moment,” he said. "I have enough experience inside the team to be straight away on pace and to help them develop early on in 2023.
"I’m not concerned that when Pierre is going to come on board, [about not] having enough information.
“Of course Pierre needs to be as quick as he can early on, because we need to be scoring points," he acknowledged. "But I’m sure with everything we have now we have in place. There’s going to be no issue.”
Meanwhile Ocon is examining his own performances to see what he will be able to do better next season.
“I always have things that I’m on top of and I try to improve but you need to look at the pattern during the year," he said. "You have things that you need differently during a race and another race.
“Sometimes you need to be more focused on helping the strategy for example," he added. "Sometimes you need to be more on the aero, because we need to really find out what’s the optimum aero level.
“It’s more about predicting the things early on in the weekend and knowing where the gains are going to be," he said. "There’s so many areas which are so difficult to predict before you arrive to a weekend.
“But the more you do races at certain tracks and the patterns are always the same at the same tracks, so you know what you are going to need to do," he noted. "And I have it all in here for next year.”
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