Life's a beach, and then you race!

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This month's schedule might not be as gruelling as the notorious triple-header earlier in the season, but it's still been a tough few weeks for everyone involved in the 2018 Formula 1 world championship.

After the demands of the searing heat and humidity of Singapore, teams and drivers then had back-to-back races in Sochi and Suzuka to contend with.

Unlike the France/Austria/Britain consecutive races in June and July - which are practically next door neighbours and easy to move from one to the other - all three are long haul flyaway races.

There's a distance of nearly 5000 miles between Sochi and Suzuka alone, with a flying time of almost ten hours. And it's a further 6700 miles around the globe to Austin, Texas - or around 13 and a half hours in the air.

It's surely no wonder if the teams feel the need for a little R&R before gearing up to next weekend's United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas.

So Red Bull has shared this delightful image of their pit crew and mechanics hard at work preparing for the race ... by taking it easy on the beach.

Hopefully their down time lasted longer than the average 2.5 seconds that they get to carry out a pit stop in an average race!

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.