Asked what they think of the FIA's proposals for 2011, some of which have caused consternation among race fans, several leading technical directors admitted to being far more receptive to the suggestions, if only up to a point.

"I think they are very interesting changes," said Renault's Pat Symonds. "They surprise me somewhat. It wasn't that long ago that we decided engines would not be a performance differentiator, we decided on homologated engines and limited development. And now it's been suggested that perhaps the only performance differentiator will be drive-train and chassis aerodynamics, vehicle dynamics is effectively put down a peg.

"I find it a little bit strange that some of the things we are doing imminently will be changing again in 2011," he continued. "We are working on kinetic energy recovery systems for 2009 that are very different for those that would be required in the suggestions for 2011, and can I make it clear they are just suggestions.

"Similarly we are adopting a standard ECU next year which has been a lot of work to get ready. There are various restrictions associated with that and then again suggestions that in 2011 we open up the electronics to further development.

"So some surprising things," admitted the Englishman, "and I think my first question is 'do we need it? Is this what we want?' I think Max is a very powerful leader and he has some very good ideas and there are many times when you need that powerful leadership because as teams we will tend to bicker and get nowhere. So I'm certainly not criticising the power of his leadership, but I do wonder if we need to really say: 'Well Formula One is broken, let's re-invent it from stage one.'

"I'm not sure we really need to," Symonds continued. "I think that there are many things we can do to improve Formula One. I think we can improve the spectacle, I think we can be more ecologically aware. But I don't think that we need to tear everything up and start at zero again. I think there are many things that can be adopted, many things that are of interest but above all I guess the thing I find hardest is that they are going to cost us a lot of money and the one thing I'd probably take issue with the FIA on is the idea that new rules should be relevant to road cars.

"That was not actually a mandate that I believe was ever agreed. It was agreed that new rules should be helpful to society at large. Or useful to society at large. I think that's a slightly different thing because the lead-on from that is that if the new rules produce technologies that are road relevant then our parent companies will come in and pay for them. Well that is absolutely not the case with Renault. Renault do not see Formula One as a technical exercise to make a better Clio, Megane or Laguna. It's a very different thing and certainly they are not going to put more money into Formula One than they do now and the so called road relevant research, the financing for that will not come from the Renault group."

Williams' Sam Michael is of similar opinion, concerned at the costs that will be incurred.

"I think that a lot of the things Pat said are pretty valid," said the Australian. "One of the things that I think was in there that I thought was quite understated was the savings made from going to the engine homologation and the engine life these days, the savings have been significant. Maybe it's different costs for different companies but if you look at the number of engines that you use, and everyone did fight against it, but if you only go back to 2002 we used six engines every race weekend and now we are using two every two race weekends. So the changes have been massive and I think that was one of the reasons for doing it.

"The second thing is that there are transfers of some things. Something that BMW mentioned was transfer of CFD technology to road cars and that is valid. It's not the fact that you go and develop a rear wing that you then go and put on your road car it's that you develop the understanding of aerodynamics and CFD that helps you better develop road cars. But at the same time, it's not an unusual process for the FIA to publish a first position and then go through a series of discussions at TWG and team principle level to try and hone down what we really want to do."

"We support most of the drafted regulations," said Honda's Jacky Eeckelaert. "I think it will push the manufacturers to build more fuel-efficient engines because probably the fuel flow will be needed. So if you want to go faster with a given amount of fuel in a given amount of time then you need to make a very fuel-efficient engine and this will probably find some spin-offs in the road cars sooner or later.

"On the other hand Honda supports the environmental position of the FIA," he added. "Especially in the case of the hybrid technology which also will be the case in 2012."