(Motorsport-Total.com) – With a total of 24 planned races, the 2026 Formula 1 season has become a true marathon. The summer break (Explained: What’s behind it) is therefore not only a welcome opportunity for the teams but also for the drivers to recover from the stress of the first half of the season.
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“Normally, I don’t feel like I need a break,” said Mercedes driver George Russell after the Hungarian Grand Prix, the last race before the summer break. “This year, I definitely feel like I need one.”
This assessment was also shared by Pierre Gasly, after Alpine had recently shown inconsistent performances. “I’m more concerned with trying to get a handle on pure pace … and, yes, I need a break,” said the Frenchman in Hungary.
From continuous operation to “Summer Shutdown”
Rewind three decades, to a time when the Formula 1 calendar only included 16 instead of 24 races, there was no such thing as a summer break. The Grands Prix followed each other every two weeks, starting with San Marino in early May and ending with Portugal in late September.
Those who wanted a longer summer vacation simply skipped the race in Hungary in mid-August – of course, not an option for the drivers, but something many non-operational staff valued greatly even back then.
Interim reports: The best Formula 1 drivers at the summer break
The current calendar with 24 races is considered the absolute maximum of what is feasible without staff burnout. A two-week “Summer Shutdown,” during which factories close their doors for two weeks, has been anchored in the sporting regulations since 2014 – even though there were only 19 races per year at that time.
Although the war in the Middle East led to an April without any Formula 1 events this year, it is clear that many drivers perceived the official summer break between the Grands Prix in Hungary and the Netherlands as a much-needed timeout in an otherwise packed schedule.
But is it even possible or desirable to completely switch off? Most serious sports scientists consider the concept of “momentum,” where positive or negative results are inherently self-sustaining, to be illusory.
A lull in the relentless parade of race weekends offers drivers suffering from what psychologists call “negative accumulation” the opportunity for a reset. There is a way to use the free time the summer break offers to either maintain peak human performance or restore the previous level – depending on the individual.
The psychology behind recovery
“I would say all drivers need it,” says Dr. Elina Haukipuro, elite mental coach and former Mercedes F1 team doctor, in an exclusive interview with Autosport, a sister platform of Motorsport-Total.com in the Motorsport Network.
“In the last few race weekends before the summer break, we saw drivers say: ‘I want to not think about racing for a while, I just want to completely switch off.’ Some who performed well on track don’t necessarily express this, but that doesn’t mean the need is less.”
“Even when you perform well, the same kind of accumulation happens where you are simply tired throughout the season – from traveling, jet lag, maybe carrying a few injuries from training.”
“If we look at the Formula 1 schedule now, every year it is said: ‘We try to make it easier for the people involved in this sport so they don’t have these massive timezone changes.’ But we still have a lot of this zigzag course around the world.”
“So the room for recovery was very small, especially in the last three or four weeks of the season,” emphasizes Haukipuro. To recall: even before the mid-season break, there were four races over five weekends, and at the end of the season, the rescheduled Bahrain Grand Prix makes it really busy again.
It was a mentally particularly stressful time for Russell, to name just one, because he was forced to investigate whether his driving style was responsible for a strange top speed deficit compared to his Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli.
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At McLaren, Oscar Piastri was in a similar situation, which seemed to manifest externally in some uncharacteristically irritated radio exchanges with the command post in Hungary. “As soon as you have a double-header or triple-header, this natural little window to just take a step back and recover is completely lost,” explains Haukipuro.
“So everyone definitely needs that. And the worse the performance was, maybe during a race, let alone several races in a row, the more this negative accumulation takes place – and the greater the need to get this recovery, both mentally and physically.”
“I always say that the recovery phase is not a kind of reward for hard work or good performance – it is actually part of the work. It is something we also plan in advance, what we do and how we do it. I wouldn’t dismiss a driver and say: ‘Three weeks, okay, see you later.'”
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“We plan very meticulously, we pay close attention to what recovery looks like. Usually, we divide it into three phases,” reveals the former Mercedes F1 team doctor. “The first is to completely switch off, especially mentally. That can be a few days, it can be a whole week.”
“Then we have this build-up phase in the middle and finally the closing phase at the end. And how that looks for the individual driver or how it affects him depends on what he does with that time.”
The danger of the downward spiral for Formula 1 drivers
Negative accumulation or a downward spiral (also called “spiralling”) occurs when self-doubt intensifies over time because an athlete makes a mistake or believes to be the victim of a mistake, and this remains unresolved.
This creates frustration, which can trigger further mistakes. It is also possible that competitors who have generally achieved positive results fixate on relatively insignificant errors because the brain has a natural tendency to focus on the negative.
The “reset” routines depend on the individual and usually require time to reflect, an appropriate support network, and dealing with what triggered the spiral in the first place and what can be done to focus on new goals without overthinking the problem.
In this case, the “build-up phase” involves working on so-called anchoring techniques so that the driver can recognize the start of a downward spiral and refocus. The “closing phase” focuses on constructive reactions to events.
Pure rest would be a “recipe for disaster”
It is a danger to just go to the beach and forget everything. “If you have someone who had a somewhat tough season and does not actively deal with it because, for example, they lack support in their environment or simply do not engage much with the topic, then a break is usually not the best,” says Haukipuro.
“Because ultimately, you sink even deeper into this negative space you are in. Completely switching off, not maintaining work, not dealing with things you should deal with, and doing that over several weeks – that is usually a recipe for disaster.”
“In cases where it is well planned and we have complete recovery at the beginning, then mentally and physically process everything and finally do some training to finish,” says the mental coach, who has a lot of experience working with Formula 1 drivers.
“If we then really deal with the challenges we had during the season so far, so that we can completely let go of them and focus on what is still to come – then it is a successful recovery. Everyone definitely needs some time just to catch their breath.”
“Having a few normal routines, not being in a different time zone, not constantly sitting on a plane, but actually just having some time to see friends, do other things, but still very much focusing on one’s own recovery. Active recovery, that’s how I would describe it.”
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