From the chequered flag being waved at Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix to the five lights going out for the subsequent race start in Miami, there is a 35-day hiatus.
Not since the Covid-hit 2020 season when the opening eight grands prix were cancelled has Formula One faced such a long break, this one caused by the races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia being cancelled because of the conflict in the Middle East.
For the likes of George Russell in the fastest car on the grid, or his former team-mate Lewis Hamilton, who has a smile back on his face after his nadir of 2025, such a halt is unwanted.
Others, however, will perceive it differently. In theory, it gives rival teams much-needed time to fix their own gremlins and try to close the gap on the front-running Mercedes.
Williams had been hopeful of shining under the new regulations and turned their attention to the 2026 car last season earlier than almost all their rivals only to find their new iteration overweight and under-firing.
Team principal James Vowles has been counting down the days to the cessation in racing, saying that he and his team would use “every single hour” to get “back on the front foot”.
Meanwhile, Valtteri Bottas said of newcomers Cadillac: “I think it’s actually quite beneficial. We have more time to sort things out.”
The simplistic thinking is that more time to work on research and development will reap rewards on the track. For Aston Martin, that could hardly be more acutely felt. The spotlight has been on them for all the wrong reasons. There was the incredibly frank press briefing from Adrian Newey at the season’s start in Melbourne when he warned of “permanent nerve damage” to his drivers, so shocking were the vibrations in the car caused by the Honda power unit.
Things haven’t got much better since. Having completed the fewest laps of anyone in winter testing, neither Fernando Alonso nor Lance Stroll finished the opening two races, although they both made it across the line in the China sprint.
Owner Lawrence Stroll has worn a face of thunder in the paddock so far. Andy Cowell had started the year as team principal only to be replaced by Newey in that role after the pair clashed heavily. As a shareholder and the supposed panacea to the team’s ills, Newey was always going to win that particular fight. In time, he looks likely to revert solely to his speciality of technical wizardry, with Jonathan Wheatley looming as the new team principal following his Audi exit.
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Honda will desperately want the arrival of the first of three in-season Additional Development Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO), when teams who are at least 2% off the best-performing engine on the grid can get further power-unit upgrades. But that won’t come until Monaco in June.
Aston Martin would love to find some solutions in these next five weeks to the vibrations in particular, as well as the down-on-power engine.
There is, however, a viewpoint that the enforced shutdown might be to the detriment of the others who are chasing Mercedes. As Red Bull Racing’s Isack Hadjar said: “The more racing, the more we understand, the closer we get to the best engines. So, on that side, it’s definitely a bit of a disadvantage for us, but it’s fine.”
Having earned a reputation for being so good developmentally during the season, Red Bull could well prove to be the ones to benefit most from the time out. And one senses that their star driver Max Verstappen won’t necessarily mind the break, having made no secret of his distaste at the new regulations.
Photograph by Lars Baron/LAT Images