How much speed does F1 really need?

Formula 1 is the fastest form of single-seater racing on the planet. A recent Autosport study calculated that it currently laps between five to six per cent faster than the next equivalent category - Japan's Super Formula.

There is a clear desire to maintain this status quo. Suggestions that F1 fell too close to GP2 pace when V6 hybrid turbo engines were first introduced in 2014 caused much alarm.

Revisions to the 2017 technical regulations have focused on aggressive aerodynamics, designed to make F1 cars several seconds per lap quicker from next season.

"We need to make everybody aware just how much talent, skill, fitness, physical concentration, discipline is required by the drivers just to keep the car on the tarmac," argues McLaren acting CEO Jonathan Neale.

"Particularly that's what I like about the idea next year, that the cars will get faster.

"That will balance out the power unit versus chassis piece and the cars will be quite difficult to drive.

"The cars have to be the most extreme - they have to be faster on braking, faster on acceleration, more powerful, cornering faster, and there must be no part in the sport for nurturing anything other than your tyres.

"It's got to be a sprint. It can't be a cruise."

The fact Lewis Hamilton recently broke Michael Schumacher's 2004 circuit record in qualifying for the 2016 Bahrain Grand Prix (by more than six tenths of a second) suggests F1 cars are already capable of going faster than they ever have.

The problem is that they are far slower in the races. The drivers have complained about how easily the tyres overheat and lose performance, and the fact the cars are heavier and lazier because they have to complete race distances on a single tank of fuel.

Drivers will always want to go faster, and they will always want more grip. Aerodynamics is established as the best way to achieve these aims. But the drivers have become increasingly vocal about the fact that further increases to aerodynamic grip would harm the racing.

There is also the problem of the pure spectacle of driving the cars. To the untrained eye they look easy to drive because they are stuck to the road, smothered in grip.

"Unfortunately, at the moment Formula 1 cars are too damn good," agrees Williams chief technical officer Pat Symonds. "While they are incredibly difficult to get the best out of, they don't look it.

"There are far too many people who harp back to the old days, but one thing you did see in the old days was guys working, and the reason they were working was because the cars weren't very sophisticated.

"Now there is so much engineering and expertise going into the cars they are becoming quite sophisticated.

"It's difficult to say Formula 1 is the top echelon of motor racing if it isn't the fastest on any given circuit, so it is important that Formula 1 cars are fast.

"The laptimes need to be low, the G-levels in corners need to be high, the speeds on the straight need to be high.

"They don't have to be the best in every respect. An LMP1 car is faster on a straight than a Formula 1 car, if the straight is long enough.

"But overall you've got to be able to say 'wow, that's ultimate automotive performance'."

It seems F1 stands at an important crossroads in this regard. Should it pursue pure speed at all costs, unfettered by the heavy regulatory burden that so infuriates the likes of Adrian Newey?

Or should it release the vice-like grip of laptime on the collective conscience, and think more about things such as the driving challenge posed by the cars, the racing they create, and the spectacle produced by that combination?

"The cars have to be quicker than other similar formula, particularly something like GP2 which races nearby," insists Mercedes technical chief Paddy Lowe. "If the cars are too slow then we lose that impression they are the best.

"But equally they don't want to be too fast, because if they are too fast you will lose the spectacle because it will become too difficult to overtake.

"We could make bigger circuits, but then you are just moving the crowd away from the cars, which is already bad enough at quite a few.

"If you actually want a race then you need the performance to be in a certain window, which is what we've done generally - maintained performance within a sort of five or six-second a-lap band, which interestingly we are at the fastest end of at the moment, despite people's complaints.

"We could do more, particularly on the following [other cars] aspect. The performance we have is dependent on aerodynamics and aerodynamics inherently causes a difficulty to overtake compared to non-aerodynamic formula.

"We've fought for many years to find the right balance there and DRS was something which allowed us to escape from that compromise, albeit with something people think isn't pure.

"I'm OK with it because it just gets a better compromise between car following and absolute performance, which you need aero for."

F1 comes alive when those elements that make cars quicker are taken away - low-grip surfaces, mixed conditions, tyre compounds that are not understood fully, cars that are not set up correctly.

Why rely on circumstance? If the sheer spectacle of the drivers behind the wheel of F1 cars became wilder, more visceral, more thrilling - perhaps by increasing power massively and reducing grip correspondingly - would speed (or rather laptime) actually matter all that much?

"A very good example is MotoGP," argues Pirelli motorsport boss Paul Hembery. "Compared to a Formula 1 car those bikes are almost 30 seconds slower per lap, but I don't hear anyone saying MotoGP is boring.

"A lot of people like MotoGP, despite not liking motorcycles, because the actual racing is interesting and compelling, and it's interesting because there is overtaking and the element of the man is clear to see.

"The absolute speed as such is not the deciding factor. It's substantially slower, yet most people's perception is that it's the most exciting form of motorsport."

Currently F1 is caught between the two ends of a competing spectrum - pursuit of faster laptimes through aerodynamics, which consequently tends to make overtaking more difficult, or pursuit of better racing by undermining those aerodynamic gains, currently achieved using high-degradation tyres and DRS.

The way the technical rules are headed for next season suggests F1 has collectively decided speed is actually of the essence and laptimes must be lowered.

Aero is set to play an enhanced role and Pirelli is promising tyres to allow that pure performance to be accessed more frequently.

F1 can go whichever way it pleases, and the ultimate result of these technical decisions remains to be seen, but what F1 cannot do is pretend its chosen path won't have important knock-on effects elsewhere.

Decades of aerodynamic development in motor racing remind us constantly that when it comes to speed F1 cannot simply have its cake and eat it.