This is an area where Formula One can be of real benefit to the car industry. Purnell says: “Car manufacturers are already working flat out to develop optimal low-emission engines and there is little that engine development programmes in F1 will add to this effort . However, in five years or so, their attention will turn more and more to subsidiary devices incorporating energy recovery. By opening up this area now, Formula One can make a real difference to this important facet of future car technology.”

It is envisioned that the ten-year engine freeze will reduce manufacture power-train budgets by as much as half. The original five-year freeze, introduced at the beginning of the 2007 season, saved tens of millions of Euros for some of the teams. But for others, the same resources were merely used to chase smaller gains. The new rule seeks to close this loophole.

Purnell says: “Some manufacturers had project groups spending extravagant sums working on such minor areas as water pumps, exhaust pipes, inlet snorkels, the things around the engine that you were allowed to change.  So we looked at that and saw that the only way to stop spending with finality is to prevent any changes whatsoever. Freeze the engine, freeze the peripherals as well, and do this long-term so there are no thoughts about retaining a department to develop future engines.  This may seem brutal, but to contain spending, it delivers.”

With the average engine budget for a manufacturer team estimated to be around €200m, Purnell believes this will create huge savings. The timing of the freeze is also pertinent because all of the engines this season appear to have been evenly matched with just  fractions of a second separating top from bottom. Certainly none of the teams have complained that they will be rendered uncompetitive by the extension of this ruling.

As Purnell says: “It’s significant that at no stage did anyone say ‘we hate the engine freeze idea because we’re down on power and disadvantaged by that’.  In 2007, everyone seemed to be even on engines so the opportunity was there to extend the freeze, bring down costs, and yet be fair to all the manufacturers involved.”

The corollary of this is that talented development engineers will be brought back into the mainstream automotive sector at a time when they are sorely needed. The FIA’s expert consultancy Ricardo has emphasized that there is paramount concern amongst manufacturers with regards their ability to meet  the proposed EU CO2 emissions target of 120g/km.  The FIA then became aware that in some cases the manufacturers are desperately short of engineers to help them achieve these targets. This view was reinforced by a survey conducted by Ricardo, which concluded that in Europe there are not enough engineers available to the industry to achieve the emissions proposal.

So freezing engine development was an obvious move, closing down a huge area of spending whilst also helping manufacturers to meet important emissions targets. But it raised a potentially problematic question. How can F1 deliver an environmental message with no change to engine output?

The answer begins with KERS. Purnell says: “KERS is something the public can understand quite easily. The technical challenge is huge and there will be very little constraint on it. This is very different to the current engine or chassis regulations, which are massively constrained. As a project it is one of the freest areas of development in F1 for the last 15 years.”

KERS, which will be introduced to Formula One in 2009, has two major benefits. It keeps F1 at the forefront of technological development and has the potential for use in production cars.

KERS also provides a good public message. “When you think about the environment, F1 can be a wonderful vehicle for delivering a message” says Purnell. “There is intense interest in the sport and most fans are petrolheads. So if they see that F1 is going green and if they see kinetic energy recovery is cutting edge and sexy, it leads to an attitude change. We feel that is an important contribution.”

The introduction of the KERS device is just the first stage of this process. Initially, even the best teams will achieve gains of up to 0.3 or 0.4 seconds a lap, which will be even smaller in terms of performance differentiation as most will achieve at least half of the potential gains. But the contribution allowed by the regulations from these systems is likely to increase in future years, with more energy saved from the braking systems and an increased allowance for the amount of energy stored.

In the longer-term F1 could incorporate other systems such as thermal energy recovery. This technology is still in its infancy and would have little impact if introduced today. But Purnell believes there will be a time when F1 will be able to help aid its development and almost certainly will do so.

As he says: “This is all part of the strategic direction over the next decade. There will be technologies that will begin to become attractive to put on the car. For instance, researchers are developing a type of silicon which simply converts a heat gradient into electricity. Today they are very inefficient and bulky. But in future we can imagine such devices removing the need for an alternator and delivering significant amounts of power.  Some 30 per cent of the energy available goes straight out of the exhaust pipe, so there’s a lot of potential.”

Eventually, of course, the increased use of energy recovery devices will necessitate engine change as the current V8 power plants become less relevant. For instance, an exhaust recovery system would probably require fundamental modifications to the engine.

The new regulation allows for changes after five years with a further two-year notice period but these would have to be incorporated without reopening a major area of expenditure. Here, there are a number of potential solutions, such as a spec engine for all teams but with leeway for engineers to develop areas related to their recovery systems.

However, this is a long way off. For the moment, the introduction of KERS can be achieved quickly and efficiently. And it has the added benefit of being able to adapt for use with all current engines.

As Purnell puts it: “Obviously if the teams were to redesign their engine blocks they could incorporate KERS in a much neater way. But this is hardly necessary. And as recent experience has shown, any opportunity to touch the engine is opening up a Pandora’s box full of potential expenditure.”

For further information on the FIA’s vision for the future of Formula One, please click here for an interview with Tony Purnell in Race Tech magazine.