F1 gearing up for August shutdown

The recently-married Romain Grosjean knows exactly how he will be spending F1's long August shutdown.

"I think it's time for a honeymoon," smiled Lotus' rookie Frenchman.

But not everyone is quite as keen, even halfway through the most arduous F1 calendar in history which so far has featured eleven grands prix in the space of just four months.

After the whole month of August off, including a two-week strict factory shutdown for all the teams, the circus will reconvene for nine more grands prix squeezed into less than three months.

"Am I looking forward to the break? Yes," seven time world champion Michael Schumacher told Germany's Sport Bild.

"Do I feel like I urgently need a vacation? Not necessarily," he explained.

Force India's Nico Hulkenberg agrees, insisting he is "absolutely not ready for a holiday".

"I will visit friends in Germany," he said. "But four weeks? Two would have been enough."

Marussia's Timo Glock said he too would be happy to move straight on to Spa, "But I think for the mechanics it (the break) is very good."

Lewis Hamilton agrees: "The team is travelling non-stop and they work incredibly long hours away from their families.

"So it's an important time for them to go away and relax and refresh and get ready for the second half of the season which is going to be the most intense."

During the 14-day factory shutdown, even the teams' suppliers may not do any work for their F1 clients, while team members are forbidden even to access official email servers.

Some marketing and press is permissible, as is logistics work and the maintenance of factories and machines.

But surely it is almost possible to stop thousands of active formula one minds from ticking over?

"It works on trust," Sauber team manager Beat Zehnder told Auto Motor und Sport when asked how the shutdown is policed.

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