Esteban Ocon has revealed that his winter training has been hampered by a lung virus that he caught following the 2022 Formula 1 season finale in Abu Dhabi.
The Alpine driver insisted that his fitness has now returned to the same levels as last year and are “back 100 now” but with his progress restricted for one and a half months, due to the virus, he explained his team were understandably “quite worried” about the situation.
“I’ve been very sick, after Abu Dhabi,” Ocon said. “I got some kind of virus in the lungs, so for one and a half months I was not really able to go back on the fitness level that I was supposed to have.”
The Frenchman is approaching his fourth season with Alpine this year, after ending 2022 on the back of a career-high points-tally, despite not achieving a single podium for the entire season. This year he will race alongside Alpine newcomer and fellow Frenchman, Pierre Gasly.
“But we’ve done a great job with my team, with my coaches, to go back to a fitness level I had in the previous year and I feel great now. But it’s such a short period of time, those viruses are strong and everyone needs to take care obviously.
“Back 100 now, but it was worrying for a moment. I’m happy with how it ended but obviously a little bit of a difficult moment start of pre-season.
“I was able to do some things, but I have to say my cardio went to the highest level at walking pace it was that bad, we were quite worried, but we did everything in a way for me to recover as quick as possible and to switch that into full training mode when I was feeling better, then I climbed massively up.
“But for a long time it did plateau, and that’s when we started to worry but it’s great to have a very strong team around me to be able to guide me and keep my head up during those moments.”
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