Ocon outlines recovery plan for intense 2024 season

Recovering in rapid fashion is of the utmost importance in 2024, with the calendar consisting of a record-breaking 24 races. 2023 was originally supposed to be a 24-race season, only for races in China and Imola to be cancelled.

As things currently stand, every race in 2024 is going ahead, making it an even more gruelling campaign than usual for the 20 drivers. Whilst the Bahrain Grand Prix actually takes place at the start of March, the first practice session of the season will commence at the end of this month.

The season finale in Abu Dhabi will close the curtain on the 2024 F1 season at the start of December, meaning the drivers and the teams will be travelling across the globe for just over nine months.

When taking into account that this season also has six sprint races, it can be argued that the drivers have 30 races to complete in the upcoming campaign.

A big issue with a calendar as big as this season's is fatigue, something which clearly had an impact on several drivers towards the end of last year.

Many drivers were ill after the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix due to the huge time zone difference between Sin City and Abu Dhabi, where they flew to just a matter of days after racing down the iconic Vegas strip.

Ocon remaining fit and healthy this season is vital, considering that he's without a contract currently for 2025. He's even been linked to Mercedes.

To be as prepared as possible for the challenges to come, Ocon is increasing his recovery work, which he is confident will allow him to resume his training and Alpine duties faster.

Speedy recovery critical

"Recovery is going to be a big part," Ocon told select media including RacingNews365. "As I said last year, this year, I'm going to be coming back every time to my training centre where they have recovery devices.

"There's many things that I'm going to be spending a lot of time on, to recover quicker so I can go back to work and train quicker. That's going to be a good thing to be doing. And that's the state of mind, no fancy thing left to right."

The Frenchman is actually one of the drivers who was ill at the end of last season, although he is now feeling much better and has been spending two hours every night sharpening up on the simulator.

"It's difficult with these viruses that are, you know, super strong," Ocon said. It's quite crazy.

"So, yeah, I've been training well this winter, you know, I feel good. I've developed well in many different areas. And now I've been racing for two hours on the sim as well, every night."