Ocon: I've been really ill during the winter

Ocon will be heading into the new F1 season with a new teammate, compatriot Pierre Gasly who joined from AlphaTauri to replace Fernando Alonso who is now an Aston Martin driver.

Speaking ahead of the reveal of the A523, Alpine's 2023 F1 challenger, Ocon looked back on a winter break which he spent trying to recover from illness and getting back to a proper level of fitness ahead of the 23-race season upon us.

"I said before, I’ve been really ill during the winter," he revealed, "so I’ve had to put a lot of effort to try and come back to the best level possible in fitness, and I’ve done so. A bit of a challenging one, but happy with the result, and ready to start now."

The Frenchman is also feeling the benefits of starting his fourth season with the Enstone-based F1 team; he said: "I feel stronger.

"I’m stronger than ever I would say because [of] the continuity with this team, getting a lot more years under my belt, knowing last year’s car very well – it’s been difficult to understand how things were working with this car – but now we have a second year with the same regulation in the end and the same team and the same people around me, it’s a good moment to keep stepping up.

"So I feel good," he went on, "The experience and knowing things was helping me over time and my progression hasn’t come to an end yet. As long as I feel I am progressing, I am happy.

"I feel motivated, ready – we had obviously a good winter break to reflect on everything, and just to recharge the batteries and come back strong," the winner of one grand prix maintained.

Alpine did well on 2022 by beating McLaren to fourth in the Constructors' Championship, and while Alonso suffered from reliability on many occasions, Ocon finished eighth in the Drivers' Standings, having scored 92 points despite suffering from a couple of DNF's.

Reflecting on 2022; Ocon said: "Obviously, what we missed last year was a podium finish; this is clearly something that I want to step back on – finishing on the podium would be something definitely awesome for us to achieve.

"More importantly to close the gap to third place in the constructors’," he added. "If we finish fourth again, which is not a given – it’s always a difficult task to reach – but if we finish fourth, very close to third, I think that would be a very good and solid season.

"But if we can close the gap to third place that would definitely be an awesome season. We keep that in the back of our mind – we are going to focus on ourselves first, get testing right, extract all the best that we can for that and prepare for the first race," the 26-year-old concluded.

As mentioned, Alpine were fourth in the Constructors' Table, a whopping 342 points behind third-placed Mercedes, which is the gap Alpine are targeting to reduce.