(Motorsport-Total.com) – In Formula 1, time is everything. Not just the time ticking down on the stopwatch, but also the time required for design, development, and refinement. It is the invisible factor that determines success or failure.
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The teams are in a constant race against time: every detail is planned, every task meticulously timed, and any susceptibility to error is reduced to an absolute minimum. Nothing is left to chance.
The cancellation of the two Formula 1 races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia has created an unexpected window of time. A break that, from the outside, might seem like a welcome opportunity to slow down, regroup, or perhaps just take a breath.
The Italian journalists from Motorsport.com, a sister platform of Motorsport-Total.com within the Motorsport Network, spent a day in Maranello, at the heart of Ferrari, to discover that the reality looks completely different.
How Ferrari used the Formula 1 break
At the headquarters of the Prancing Horse, there is a hive of activity: there’s no sign of a break, the pace remains relentless, the standards unchanged – as if this year’s race calendar had not been interrupted at all. The racing may be on hold, but the clock keeps ticking.
Precisely for this reason, April has become a key opportunity for the technical departments of all teams to delve even deeper into the data from the initial phase of the season. “Having more time available has allowed us to go deeper into our analyses,” reveals Ferrari Technical Director Loic Serra.
“Since you’re not immediately confronted with a new flood of data from the next race, you can afford to linger longer and go into more detail.” Between the Pirelli tire test and a planned filming day in Monza, Ferrari already had its hands full, but was now able to tackle these tasks much more efficiently.
“What break? There was no break at all,” laughs Sporting Director Diego Ioverno. “We simply decided not to let it become a break. We filled the weeks with activities that were not originally planned, or we simply distributed the already planned tasks better and more effectively.”
The “invisible” world of Formula 1 logistics
In Formula 1, logistics is a well-oiled machine that operates strictly behind the scenes. As long as everything runs smoothly, it remains invisible. However, remove just one puzzle piece, and its full complexity becomes apparent. Because after the pre-season tests, the pit facilities in Bahrain remained untouched.
The plan was to return and find everything ready for the race weekend. However, the equipment is currently still there, ready for onward transport to a new location. This is because each team has around seven garage kits, which are stored at hubs and shipped by sea freight to keep costs down.
The two-week break scheduled between the races in Miami and Montreal results precisely from the time needed to transport the equipment used in Florida to Canada. The breaks between certain races are never accidental: they are calculated precisely so that the material can cross oceans and continents.
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Interrupting this flow means having to reassemble the entire puzzle. “Efficiency is crucial nowadays,” explains Ioverno, “because even the transport of equipment falls under the budget cap. In recent weeks, we have tried to figure out how we can manage the rotation of the equipment.”
“We hope that a route will soon open up so that we can retrieve the kit stuck in Bahrain, as it is supposed to be used again at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. But we have to be ready with a Plan B anyway.”
The final touches on pit stops
While one part of the team revises travel routes and strategies, another part continues to intensively refine pit stops. Because in the hectic winter break of 2026, the team was unable to train as many repetitions as it had originally intended.
“Let me take a step back,” explains Ioverno. “Fortunately, it wasn’t visible in the results, but this year we traveled to the first race with significantly fewer training sessions than in previous seasons.”
“The testing phase was simply too intense; we started with the test drives in the week when we would normally have already been in our third week of training. In the two weeks prior, we worked day and night shifts, so we were only able to complete a third of the planned pit stops.”
In recent years, teams have realized that they can no longer rely on a fixed, always identical pit crew. We are talking about a group of 27 people, and as in all other areas, the continuous expansion of the calendar has made personnel rotation absolutely necessary.
This is crucial for the well-being of the employees, but conversely also means that significantly more training is needed for everyone involved to get up to speed and build the so-called “muscle memory” for their respective position.
“There isn’t a single race where the pit stop crew is identical to that of the previous race. Therefore, the unexpected break this month was an absolute blessing,” admits Ioverno. “We were able to catch up on all the training sessions that we simply didn’t get to in January and February.”
Since the team returned from Suzuka, the pit stop crews have followed the same patterns every day. A three-part training session in which three different teams rotate – essentially a preview of what awaits us soon in Miami, Canada, Monaco, and Barcelona. In any case, there was no sign of a break at Ferrari.
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