Bring ground effect back, says Michael

While current proposals to come up with a new technical package for 2011 are geared primarily towards increasing F1's energy efficiency, its relevance to road cars and its environmental impact, the plans are also seen as an opportunity to improve the sporting element.

According to Michael, the return of ground effect - where a low-pressure area is created below the car, effectively sucking it to the road - is an idea worthy of consideration.

"When you have cars that create loads of downforce, it's pretty difficult to achieve passing," he said. "Going towards categories that have less downforce and power doesn't seem like the solution. Look at F3; it's the most boring racing you can ever watch. Reducing the downforce isn't the solution for F1.

"I do think you can benefit from following the experience F1 had in the 1980s of using ground effect more than we do now. The things that have probably made F1 worse is getting rid of ground effect, and lifting the front wing - it's gone up 150mm in the last five years. Both those things made the cars very sensitive to onset flow."

Michael said that any leap in performance that ground effects may bring about could easily be managed by adapting the tyres.

"You need to adjust performance elsewhere, but you can do that with the tyre," he explained. "If the cars get too fast, Bridgestone can change that from one race to the next. It's quite easy - and we should make an advantage from that."

While the idea would undoubtedly be a hard sell to all of the teams, Michael insisted that it could be made viable.

"Every time we've looked at doing that before, we've seen that it costs £2m to make two cars and everyone says they can't be bothered paying for that.

"I don't think it's too risky to go to a ground effect car. The OWG [Overtaking Working Group] proposal does not include adjustable wings."

Ground effect is currently featured in the Champ Car World Series, although its use was severely diminished in F1 when flat undertrays were made mandatory in 1983.