Video: Red Bull turns out the lights for summer break

The Formula 1 summer break is upon us. For the first time this year, the head offices, workshops and manufacturing facilities at teams including Red Bull will fall completely silent for a fortnight.

FIA regulations mandate a total shutdown for two weeks in August. None of those involved in the running of the team are allowed to come into work for the duration.

In theory it means that everyone gets to head off and take a well-earned holiday. When they come back they'll be refreshed and re-energised for the remaining nine races of the 2017 season.

Reigning Champions Red Bull began their two week break at the weekend. Driver Max Verstappen's last official duty was to take part in the in-season test at the Hungaroring on Tuesday.

The team posted this video on their YouTube channel as evidence that the team had well and truly left the building:

Loading video

They wrote: "The F1 summer shutdown is upon us. The factory goes dark, servers power down, machine shops still.

"For the first time in a long time the radio in the race bays is turned off and silence has reign. We’ll be back in two weeks, ready to charge into the second half of a fascinating season.

"But for now, would the last person to leave, kindly turn out the lights..."

The teams will be back in plenty of time to prepare for the Belgium Grand Prix, the next race on the calendar.

It's the first of two consecutive race weekends back-to-back, with the Italian Grand Prix at Monza following seven days later.

But until then, the cars have been put to bed without so much as a night light to keep them safe from nightmares...

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.