With helmets hung-up, engines off and doors locked-up, Motorsport Week gives you the lowdown on what really happens in Formula 1 when the sport commences its summer shutdown.
Those of a certain age will remember when Formula 1 calendars consisted of 16 races spread out between mid-March until the end of October. Now it circumnavigates the globe for 24 races, and runs until December. It’s really no wonder that the drivers, teams and every relevant person involved in the sport needs a month off.
Such is the necessity for a break, the FIA have now written it into its sporting regulations, with Article 24.1 saying: “competitors must observe a shutdown period of 14 consecutive days during the months of July and/or August”.
This means that, for half of the summer break, teams are essentially forbidden from doing any work that would be deemed to assist performance of the car, from any manual work to any written communication, meaning that even if a carrier pigeon was sent by a team bearing information about, say, its aero package, and accidentally flew to the FIA HQ in Paris, that team would be handed a penalty.
However, it is believed that the FIA do not directly put in place any measures in which they will be able to investigate the teams’ activities within this period of time, but due to the incestuous way Formula 1 operates, and with a large numbers of teams all in close proximity geographically, they would be running serious risk of being the recipients of a knock at the door from the governing body if another team has decided to whistleblow on anything suspicious.
It might be worth pointing-out that this sort of regulation might also be bringing some sort of human element to the sport, whether by design or accident. A great number of technical staff within the teams will be able to have a much-deserved rest period, and might even be able to see their families for a change!
But from the point-of-view of teams being essentially forbidden from working, it cuts down the possibility for them to create any sort of performance advantage, but with work only allowed for half of the length of the break, teams will be scrambling to work within that timeframe, as Chief Operating Officer of Mercedes, Rob Thomas, explained to Autosport:
“There is a lot of planning that goes on in the run-up to these precious two weeks. It’s the only time where you can get to things that you can’t normally get to, because we’re so flat out all the time,” he said.
“It sounds obvious, but it is a time where you give everything a good going over, rather like servicing your car. It means that you can take the power down for a day and it will not disturb operations.
“Our shutdown starts at 6am on Saturday morning and when the last person leaves the site, an army of contractors will descend on the place.
“They will try to clean up as much as they can. In the machine shop, each machine will be serviced.
“We’re actually taking four machines out and bringing four new machines in, which is a pretty massive piece of work to do that. And then you’ve got all of the services around it.
Thomas summed-up the ruling as a real positive for F1, saying: “It really is the best thing we ever bought into Formula 1 because otherwise, you’d never stop.
“There are some areas of the business, people who work in commercial areas or finance and they need to be around to do end-of-month type activities. ”
As for the drivers, their movements are usually well-documented, with many taking to their social media accounts to drive us normal people insanely jealous with their lavish holidays on-board yachts, city breaks, or in Lewis Hamilton’s case, a bit of sky-diving, presumably all with the possibility of a Netflix camera following them around.
Let’s be fair for a second, though – they are human beings at the end of the day too, and with a job so incredibly unusual and one that requires the expenditure of an unnatural level of adrenaline, an opportunity to lounge about, doing as little as possible, might be actually a welcome one.
However, as tiring as it is, Formula 1 is a passion as well as a job for most of the people involved, and when Zandvoort is approaching, the excitement will surely be running through everyone with the possibility of getting back to the job at hand.
