Alpine F1’s Pierre Gasly: ‘I Know I’m One of the Fittest on the Grid’
Team Alpine made headlines this weekend with a double-podium finish that surprised the world of Formula 1. Drivers Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon took second and third place at the São Paulo Grand Prix in Brazil, following what had been a challenging season for the team. The rain-hit race saw a number of crashes and controversial team decisions, which ended up favouring the French drivers – and scoring Alpine its biggest points haul of 2024.
This was a long-awaited victory for a team which has been working hard to fine-tune its performance behind the scenes. Men’s Health caught up with Gasly, Ocon and their team earlier in the season in Baku, Azerbaijan, to find out how they face the physical challenge of competing in 24 races a year, while navigating multiple time-zones changes.
An All-Round Athlete
This year’s season started in early March and will wrap up with the final race in Abu Dhabi on 8 December. Pierre Gasly says one of the main challenges is maintaining mental stamina throughout the year. ‘Coming to the end of the season, you do start to get tired,’ he says. ‘You start feeling like you’ve been on the road for a long time, and it’s physically and mentally [difficult] to keep the same mindset, the same energy, all the way through the year.’
He tries to find a balance between the intense focus required when competing, and the need to switch off during his downtime: ‘I know I can focus very, very intensively for six months,’ he says. ‘But when I’m off training, I don’t want to hear from the team or about work.’
Gasly is competitive in the gym, as well as on the track: ‘I know roughly what everyone does [in training],’ he says. ‘I can tell you who does more cardio and who does more weights.’ Gasly trains six days a week, even if his downtime, and considers himself one of the fittest men on the grid: ‘The good thing is that I quite enjoy the process of it.’
F1 is a very rounded sport, he says. ‘You don’t need to always lift crazy heavy. A race is 90 minutes long, so you need endurance and to be able to stay focused.’
Endurance may be king, but Gasly’s not one to shy away from the bench press (he has a PB of 125kg). He is also a keen runner; each race weekend, the various teams do a run or cycle (or both, as MH saw Alpine reserve driver Jack Doohan do) around the track ahead of the race. Gasly is also a fan of padel, and he plays against his fellow drivers and the rest of his team in as many countries as he can before a race.
The Support Squad
Tom Clark, who works as a physio for Esebtan Ocon, describes a typical day of race prep: ‘Neck training, reaction, coordination, balance and core work are very specific [to the sport],’ he says. The drivers usually focus on this in the morning sessions, he says, ‘with general physical work in the afternoon.’
Neck training is crucial for F1 drivers, who are often dealing with forces of up to 5-6G [five to six times a person’s weight] on high-speed corners. Factoring in the weight of the helmet, ‘thats like 35kg pushing through the side of your neck,’ says Clark.
In training, consistency is key – ‘but that is tricky to maintain with the added stress of travelling, access to the right food, lack of kit also [plus] the added impacts of jet lag, which is the hardest thing,’ says Clark. ‘Twenty-four races, plus other commitments like sponsors, media, time on the simulator and in the factory, means there aren’t enough days in the year. But everyone’s the same.’
The pressures on Team Alpine extend beyond the two star drivers. Human performance manager Alan Hazlett – who has a background optimising teams in the Premier League and international football – now works with the Alpine F1 Team. It’s his job to find out how Alpine can fine-tune performance to make sure they’re getting the best physical and mental output from the entire team.
This includes taking the garage team through weekly reaction and mobility tests to ensure they’re able to work at the highest level – a crucial part of the programme across the F1 season. ‘These guys are not employed to be athletic, but there is a very athletic component to a certain part of their job and that’s a really difficult thing to get, so we’re looking at it.’
Nail the Basics First
‘Fatigue is a massive factor,’ Hazlett says. ‘The thing we keep coming back to is that a good night’s sleep will do you a world of good. If you sleep well and eat the right stuff, then the rest will follow.’
Hazlett starts with the basics when it comes to the team’s nutrition, keeping on top of the daily menu and recommending supplements where needed. The snack station in the garage is also stacked with a mixture of the good stuff – fruits, carbs, electrolytes plus the treats the team needs to make sure there’s plenty of variety over the race weekend.
The Alpine team come from a variety of backgrounds, with some taking holidays between races in different countries and others returning to family. To make sure they can offer targeted, individualised guidance on maximising time away from work, Alpine helps them to gather and interpret as much personal data as possible. The whole team wear Whoop fitness trackers to access their sleep, recovery and strain stats.
The most important thing, Hazlett says, is understanding the stats and trying to keep them as consistent as possible: ‘Moving across time zones, like these guys do, it’s important that people can see how they sleep and monitor their stats around the change in time. Because ultimately we can’t tell them how their bodies will react – it’s personal. But we can check for trends and give advice on how they respond and their approach to get the best out of their work/family life.’
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