Why switching off is one of the most vital skills for F1 drivers

(opens in a new tab)Sign InSubscribeF1ScheduleResultsStandingsDriversTeamsF1 UnlockedOpen menuFIA if(window.f1MobileDetection.iOSSafari) { var meta = document.createElement("meta"); meta.name = "apple-itunes-app"; meta.content = "app-id=835022598, app-argument=https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/exclusive-why-switching-off-is-one-of-the-most-important-skills-for-f1-drivers.4CDzGjJ3SZihTArYXDU3Ar.4CDzGjJ3SZihTArYXDU3Ar"; document.head.appendChild(meta); } {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/exclusive-why-switching-off-is-one-of-the-most-important-skills-for-f1-drivers.4CDzGjJ3SZihTArYXDU3Ar","url":"https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/exclusive-why-switching-off-is-one-of-the-most-important-skills-for-f1-drivers.4CDzGjJ3SZihTArYXDU3Ar","mainEntityOfPage":"https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/exclusive-why-switching-off-is-one-of-the-most-important-skills-for-f1-drivers.4CDzGjJ3SZihTArYXDU3Ar","datePublished":"2026-08-13T15:35:56.501Z","dateModified":"2026-08-13T15:35:56.501Z","headline":"EXCLUSIVE: Why switching off is one of the most important skills for F1 drivers ","author":"F1","description":"Being a Formula 1 driver requires absolute dedication, but the stars of our sport also need to know when to zone out.","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://media.formula1.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/v1786625066/fom-website/2026/Miscellaneous/EXCLUSIVEINTERVIEWADHOC%20FEATURE%20V4%20DISPLAY%20(3).png"},"isAccessibleForFree":"true","publisher":{"@type":"SportsOrganization","@id":"https://www.formula1.com#organization","name":"Formula 1","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://www.formula1.com/etc/designs/fom-website/social/f1-default-share.jpg","width":"480","height":"120"}}}Valtteri BottasLiam LawsonJack DoohanShow more tagsEXCLUSIVE: Why switching off is one of the most important skills for F1 drivers Being a Formula 1 driver requires absolute dedication, but the stars of our sport also need to know when to zone out. Formula 1 drivers are super-human athletes. The job is incredibly demanding and requires absolute commitment to make the grade – only 22 drivers get the honour of having a full-time seat after all. But that carries with it a risk, something people in numerous lines of work can relate to. How and when do you switch off mentally to avoid burning out? It’s something that Cadillac’s Valtteri Bottas opened up on earlier this year in an exceptionally honest piece with The Players’ Tribune. Reflecting on his earlier F1 career, the Finn admitted that from 2014 his “entire identity was racing” and that he “started starving” himself in the quest to lose weight and chase lap time. The turning point didn’t come for Bottas until Jules Bianchi’s tragic crash at Suzuka in October 2014, with the French driver passing away nine months later. That moment prompted Bottas to realise he genuinely did not care what happened to him anymore, and he decided to get help. After seeing a psychologist, the observation was clear – Bottas didn’t seem to have “any interests outside of racing” and “nothing else” brought him joy. “He was right,” the former Mercedes man wrote. “My whole identity was the car.” The 36-year-old’s experiences help raise a crucial question; how important is it for F1 drivers to switch off from Formula 1 for their own sakes – not just for their mental wellbeing but also to aid performance? Considering the demands of being a driver – including fitness, diving into the data, media commitments and more – it’s a balance that’s immensely challenging to get right. “[Burnout] can obviously affect every part of your life,” Mark Arnall says. The Briton knows what he's talking about, having been F1 World Champion Kimi Raikkonen’s performance coach for 20 years, while he’s also worked with fellow champions Mika Hakkinen and Sebastian Vettel. “Performance drops, and you can get into that habit of almost over-analysing what you're doing and trying to figure out why it's not potentially going well. Obviously, it can affect sleep, which affects everything else too.” He adds: “There are lots of different ways to combat it, and I think some of it is actually recognising when it's happening because it can creep up and people don't necessarily know what it is until it gets diagnosed as burnout.” ‘I've kind of had to learn it the hard way’ Every day’s a school day – as is often said – and it’s no different for F1 drivers. In order to guard against burnout, each driver has to learn what works for them, given different methods suit different people. “With this sport, you learn so much about yourself,” says Bottas when we catch up on the subject in Spa. “I've kind of had to learn it the hard way. It was all about F1 24/7 and burning the candle from both ends. Then, okay, I learned my limits.  “You learn that to arrive at a race weekend every time with a full battery, you need to do other stuff. You need to think about other stuff that is giving you energy instead of just wasting your energy all the time. This I've definitely learned.  “The beauty of life is you keep learning every day more and more. I've definitely found my balance to perform but also to have a sustainable and long career. That's what I've figured out.” The beauty of life is you keep learning every day more and more.Valtteri Bottas, CadillacWhile Bottas has been open on the subject of late, he is by no means the only driver who knows the challenge and is specifically aware of the need to zone out. “It's very important,” says Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson. “We spend so much time thinking about, obviously, the same sort of thing. I think Formula 1 weekends and weeks are very, very long as well. “We arrive in some situations on a Tuesday or a Wednesday before a race, and you're in discussions and just focused on the same thing for a lot of days, so finding time to switch off is very important. Obviously, every driver has their own way of doing that, but even on race weekends, finding time to yourself [is vital]. “I think the nights, just back at the hotel, for me personally it's making the most of those hours away from the track, trying not to think too much about F1, and coming back the next day fully refreshed is very important.” So what methods are there to call upon both at and away from the track? “It can be so many things,” says Bottas. “Everyone is individual. For me, for example, small things like escaping in nature by myself. That's one thing I can [do to] recharge or do some other hobbies.  “For example, cycling is a big passion for me. That’s one that is also good for the fitness, but it also clears my head. I love travelling, seeing new places and stuff like that, or it can be cooking up a meal for yourself or your family. Or a sauna session, that's a good one!” “I bring a guitar with me every weekend now to each race,” Lawson explains. “That's been something that's been great to mentally switch off, and among other things as well. The more experience you have, you find things that work for you." For some drivers that regimented time to switch off goes right up until the final few moments before the start of a race, as former Alpine F1 driver and current Haas reserve Jack Doohan points out. “If you find [what works for you] early, it's great, but it's not necessarily that easy,” he says. ”[I found it] after a while – I didn’t find it initially – and for me it was really being as chill as I possibly could be. “I didn't need to be pumped up, I was already raring to go. I needed the opposite, I needed chill music, I needed chess games before, I needed to be – almost in the last minutes leading up to being in the car – speaking about anything but the race as I was already thinking about it for the last 24 hours. “I really wanted to be disconnected because there's not much that is in your control that can change the outcome of the other drivers when you [go into] Turn 1 in the last 30 minutes, right? You have a plan of your ideal scenario and so does everyone else.” Perhaps if there was a master of switching off in F1 – if such a title ever existed – then the Iceman himself Kimi Raikkonen would likely be a strong contender for that crown. “With Kimi, I was quite lucky because he was just very good naturally at doing that,” Arnall recalls. “I think most people know Kimi just didn't give a crap about what people thought of him. “He would just get on with his own life and if someone said something, he would be like, ‘I don't care, you can think what you think’. It came across quite cold, but I think it was genius. “Number one, you always knew where you stood with him as he was very black and white. If he was in a grumpy mood, he was in a grumpy mood with everyone, and if he was in good mood, then he was in a good mood. But on that front, it was just super easy because he literally parked it – gone – and he moved on to the future. In that respect he was quite easy to work with.” Something we often neglect in our busy lives is sleep. It’s vital in helping our bodies recover and, if we’re not sleeping properly, it can be a significant contributing factor to burnout. However, we live in a time where there are arguably more distractions than ever before. “Sleep is now recognised way more in terms of how beneficial it is and how much focus should be put on it,” Arnall explains. “I don't speak to many people that don't struggle with sleep, and I don’t know whether it's a social media thing – in terms of we've got access to so much information whenever we want, scrolling through Instagram or whatever it might be. “From that perspective, there's a lot that can disrupt sleep. A lot of people I speak to struggle to turn off their brain and feel tired when they go to bed. People recognise and understand blue light is bad so trying to cut that sort of stuff out is important. People understand that, but then people [struggle to] do it.” That is something Doohan is actively aware of, given drivers operate in a world where anyone can post anything about them, and he’s taken steps to address it. “More people are in the know, right?” he says. “Even if they're not exactly in the know, they can still post about it because of information that they've seen or they've heard. “It's how you then choose to view that. If you have all your notifications on and have all your apps on your phone, then you're going to [see] it. But people who don't watch the news, they don't know what's going on. You choose to know the story that you want to believe and really how much you want to see is how much you believe. “I think it comes down to that. If I want to switch off, I delete the apps. If I don't want to read anything, I turn off my notifications and I put on do not disturb. It's a peaceful place.” If I don't want to read anything, I turn off my notifications and I put on do not disturb.Jack Doohan, Haas Reserve DriverSleep is also a challenge within F1 thanks to the nature of the work – regardless of whether you’re a driver, a mechanic, or any other employee within the sport. Travelling across the globe, as well as working differing shifts over long periods of time, doesn’t often go hand in hand with a consistent routine. It’s why so many drivers try and factor naps into their day, with George Russell crediting a 45-minute kip for helping him seal pole position in Las Vegas back in 2024. “One of the biggest problems in Formula 1 is, if you look at one of the best ways to address sleep, it's just to create a regular habit of going to bed at the same time every night and getting up at the same time every morning,” Arnall adds. “For us in Formula 1 that's impossible, because that hardly ever happens when you've got [all these] races a year. “If you look at Formula 1 specifically, it's a very difficult thing to get right because we can never have that consistency and certainly, like I say, it's just so important from every aspect of recovery, performance and cognitive function – and also reaction time.” The shift in mental health and wellbeing One crucial change in F1 – and society as a whole – has been the shifting attitudes to mental health and wellbeing. While there is still a way to go, the difference compared to two decades ago is night and day. “When I first came into Formula 1, if a driver was using some sort of coach from that mental side, it was almost viewed as a weakness,” Arnall explains. “It was almost ridiculed, ‘ah, so-and-so's using a sports psychologist, he can't get his head right’. “That whole thing shifted 180 degrees to the point where a driver is saying, ‘hey, he's using the sports psychologist and maybe that's going to give him an advantage. Maybe I should be doing the same’. “I think a sports psychologist, if you look at the England football team and penalties, how they address things, I think so many teams bring on those expertise that, once you get that into the system, you can make so many positive changes and you can address a lot of the issues that would plague teams in the past, just by having that expert come in and say, ‘okay this is how we need to do things to get over these barriers’. “From a personal point of view, mental wellness – and mental awareness – flipped and it was a hugely positive thing. I can't remember how many years ago it was but there was that definite transition where it was a big thing and just being aware of that mental side, and how important it is, allowed people to actually come out and say, ‘hey, I'm struggling with this’, as opposed to keeping it inside their own head where it's never going to be solved.” By having these conversations, or with drivers like Bottas being open about their own experiences, it creates a more normalised environment to assess and reflect on mental health and awareness. As has been said already, it’s an area people in all walks of life can relate to, and it’s something young drivers trying to make the grade will also have to figure out as they seek to impress those who make decisions on who gets a seat and who doesn’t. “Everyone will learn it eventually,” says Bottas. “It's hard when you're young, when you enter the sport. You want to prove yourself, you want to do well. You haven't found your limits yet or what your mental capacity is. “Eventually you learn that you've got to switch off, you've got to disconnect. Whatever that means for you can be different for me. Definitely advising young drivers to look after themselves and their energy levels [is important] but people will figure it out.” And, for those of us who don’t sit in a cockpit on race weekends, there’s still plenty to learn from witnessing how the stars of our sport apply themselves and where they draw strength from. “For a lot of these drivers it goes back to the people around them,” says Arnall. “They all have their own support network. I think that side of things is super important, but again that goes back to everyone's real life. Formula 1 is, for me, like one big family that travels around the world and it's nice to have people around that you can have a bit of a laugh with but who also support you. “In life in general that's super important, and I think people in some jobs might not have that. That's where mental health is apparent; people that have a good support structure have got an outlet for what's going on in their mind, and I think the biggest problem with some of the mental stuff is [when] it stays in the mind. “Once it comes out, you can start dealing with it and find ways forward. [Sometimes we] get stuck in there and there's no outlet – that is difficult. But people just need to find what works for them and, if there's a big problem in that area, try and make some definitive changes.” The story behind these 12 striking images from the 2026 seasonWho is Cadillac's new Team Principal?OUR PARTNERSView allDownload the Official F1 AppYour ultimate companion into
the world of Formula 1 Legal & complianceTerms of Use Beyond The Grid - the F1® podcast F1FacebookXInstagramYouTube© 2003-2026 Formula One World Championship Limited