No crash diet for Ocon despite gaining five kilos

2017 F1 season

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Esteban Ocon confirmed he did not lose any weight in response to Force India’s concerns over the performance of its car.

Team mate Sergio Perez was reported to have lost almost two kilos after the team discovered in testing its car was too heavy.

However Ocon, who underwent a rigorous pre-season training programme to increase his muscle mass, says he has not lost weight since testing.

Australian Grand Prix build-up in pictures
“It’s true I gained five kilos over the training course which was very hard,” he said. “But I achieved it and feel good in the car.”

“But then all the teams, they are quite conservative with parts on testing. They build heavy parts and once they see reliability is good they start to put lighter parts on the car. I think that’s what’s going to happen this race.”

“So on myself I didn’t lose any weight and I kept my weight feel fresh in the car.”

Ocon says his lengthy training course was essential to prepare himself for driving the new, more punishing cars.

“I was up in the mountains, almost 2,000 metres, for almost two months,” he said. “I felt this was the best for me to prepare. When you get high in altitude, for the oxygenation, when you get down again it feels easy to breathe.”

“So I was training there a lot. It was about nine hours of cardio per week, ten hours of gym per week and all the rest was reaction work, co-ordination work, visual perception work. Balance of body as well.”

“So it was complete, training, it was very tough, the toughest of my career. But I’m very happy I achieved it now looking how the cars are tough to drive.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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13 comments on “No crash diet for Ocon despite gaining five kilos”

  1. High altitude training is very risky. Just overdoing it slightly and one can be messed up for months, maybe half a year. Even top athletes who do this regularly can go wrong here, so this was an unnecessary risk he took when it’s obviously not going to be THAT hard to drive these cars.

    Let’s see how he does end of races.

    1. What damage can it do?

      1. @nickwyatt It can mess up your fitness if not done correctly because of overreaching or overtraining, and even give rise to certain issues. There’s even been cases of top athletes hospitalized because of altitude training, and I’m not talking about mountain climbing, just normal altitude training at 2000-3000m.

        1. 4-5 lateral Gs isn’t that high? Compared to the previous year’s GP2 tires, braking and acceleration, the new cars are anything but tame or lame.

          1. Just take a peek at this article if you don’t agree with me.

    2. @balue Not knowing who you are or your knowledge of physical training it’s difficult to judge if you are correct. But I will probably take the experience of his personal trainer and the Force India team over your knowledge of whether it was an unnecessary risk. Also, high altitude training has been done by many athletes for a number of years and has been shown to be successful and low risk.

      To me, it shows commitment/

      1. @georgetuk I refer to top athletes’ experience, which you doubt because of my knowledge of physical training even if the two have no obvious connection, and then you refer to top athletes’ experience?

  2. “I was up in the mountains, almost 2,000 metres, for almost two months. I felt this was the best for me to prepare. When you get high in altitude, for the oxygenation, when you get down again it feels easy to breathe.”

    Do the other drivers do this too?? Thats interesting.

    1. If its too late other drivers can try EPO.

    2. I suppose Kimi does this. But technically, having a beer at Lej Da La Pesch near St Moritz is not ‘high altitude training’….despite being at about 2700metres. :p

    3. Hamilton did it last year, didn’t notice any high altitude training pictures this year.

  3. Well, good thing he didn’t I hope FIA mandates some kind of minimum weight for the driver, so they dont have to loose weight.

  4. Most of them do Hugh altitude training at some stage during off season.. Some like hulkenberg also go to Asia to acclimatize to the heat in preparation for malaysia

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