Not everyone can truly understand the feeling of being an F1 driver. Yes, the speed is fast and the sharp turns require drivers to have quick reaction times. But a struggle that often goes under the radar — one that Esteban Ocon’s girlfriend noticed — is sitting in the car itself.
Ocon gave a tour of his garage recently, and it included his race-winning Alpine car from the 2021 Hungarian GP. In a video posted on his YouTube channel, Ocon was seen showing Flavy Barla, his girlfriend, how he fits himself inside the world’s fastest racing cars.
Upon looking at the process, Barla had one thing clear in her mind — to even get into the car, you have to be an engineer.
However, she had little idea that drivers sat so low. She couldn’t believe herself when Ocon actually made her sit inside the challenger.
“No way you can drive like that, it’s impossible,” she said. “No wonder that sometimes drivers can’t see the guy coming from the right or the left. It’s not very comfortable…”
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Ocon, however, had an answer to that.
He told Barla that Alpine had put the seat into the car based on his preferences which is why only he would find it comfortable. That’s the reason why drivers have seat fitting ahead of every season after all.
Moving on, Ocon was describing the controls, pointing towards the accelerator and brake. Barla’s response? “Nah, that’s terrible. Honestly, what kind of sport is that?”
To answer Barla, it’s a sport that is considered the pinnacle of motorsport.
Ocon and Barla’s relationship
Barla is big in the beauty pageant industry. She is a former Miss Cote D’Azur, and met Ocon in 2023, which is also the year the two of them started dating each other.
It was just months after the Alpine driver separated from his previous girlfriend Elena Berri.
Barla, understandably became very famous among the F1 community after she began going out with Ocon. Currently, she has over 218k followers on Instagram, where she shares pictures from her modeling career, and also some snippets from her life as a medical student.
Born in Nice, Barla also entered the Miss France competition in 2023, but was the fifth runner-up.
Over the last few months, she has also been spotted attending several of Ocon’s races. Perhaps now that she has felt what it’s like to sit inside an F1 car, she’ll come around and attend more Grand Prix weekends.
