MPH: Mark Hughes on...

Came back from Shanghai via New York and Portugal, just one of many unconventional ways the Formula 1 paddock returned home courtesy of the ash cloud. Spent a couple of days in NYC, Central Park dotted with people doing Tai Chi, slow-motion exercises in solitude. The practice ironically seems to be more commonplace in Manhattan than in China, its place of origin. It's to do with focusing the energy and slowly releasing it, the aim being to achieve the fusion of yin and yang in order to reach the ultimate (taijitu) state of being.

So many opposing pulls needing a unifying force, much the same situation in which F1 finds itself as it ponders its future. The focus is being set on 2013, with an energy-conscious formula to anticipate the increasing pressure to be politically on-message the sport will be subject to. A small-capacity turbocharged engine, with KERS and turbo compounding (recovering energy from exhaust-gas heat) is the agenda that's being pushed particularly hard at the moment.