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Peter Windsor against mid-season break

Peter Windsor doesn't want a mid-season break © Sutton Images

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US F1's sporting director Peter Windsor is unhappy that F1 factories will be forced to shut down again this August.

The rule was introduced by the Formula One Teams' Association last year in order to cut costs during the season. But some teams, including Williams and McLaren, complained that the enforced closure had the opposite effect, as it required them to intensify their efforts in order to catch up on lost time.

Windsor wrote in his blog - on the official US F1 site - that the break would cause more problems than it solved for his team.

"August for Americans is just another working month in which some people maybe take a week or two away," he said. "There was an F1 team meeting vote in the early fall about whether the 2009 F1 August shut-down had been a 'success'. I was impressed to hear the McLaren guys say that it was a waste of time and that most of their staff had found it all very frustrating, but sadly these were lone voices: the majority of the teams, led by Red Bull, it seemed to me, are firmly committed to the plan. And so shut down we will."

He added that the USA is much more "industrious" than Europe over the festive period too.

"Here, at our home base, we were quiet on Christmas Day, naturally, and then again today [New Year's day]. The UK - and most of Europe - basically closed on December 18 and will not stagger back to life until January 4. That's 16 valuable days lost in the too-short life of the F1 European winter."

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