Mark Hughes: F1's Inside Line

The FIA's proposals for hybrid engine technology in Formula 1 from 2011 make fascinating reading. But they make for even more fascinating implications.

The general principle is that power is made up of a combination of engine and electrical output to give performance roughly on a par with what we have now despite a smaller engine running at little more than half the speed - and which gives a 30 per cent boost in fuel efficiency.

It's not that F1 is specifically chasing mpg targets, more that the FIA is trying to align the sport's spend with that already being spent by the same manufacturers in their hybrid road car R&D.

That way, F1-specific spend need not be so cripplingly high. At the same time it makes F1 part of the solution rather than part of the problem of the environmental challenge.

It could transform F1 from a potential enemy of the movement that we are all part of (like it or not) to its poster boy.

It could lead the way in technologies that when applied to road cars save the world millions of gallons of fossil fuels and millions of tons of CO2 emissions, making that progress way faster than it would be without F1's white-hot competitive drive and relentless proving ground.

Similarly, it could transform the image of hybrid cars.

"At the moment you're a beard and sandals man if you drive a Toyota Prius," says Tony Purnell, the FIA's technical consultant. "But if it could be seen in F1 to be associated with a great surge of additional acceleration, suddenly it becomes a whole lot sexier."

The concept of having an additional 190bhp at the press of a button would go a long way to introducing some overtaking into the sport - but given that you get this for only a few seconds it would need to be used tactically.

At Malaysia, where Kimi Raikkonen was closing fast on Lewis Hamilton in the last few laps, we pretty much knew he wasn't going to be able to pass.

But if he had his 190bhp boost it would have been fascinating to see whether he deployed it as soon as he was up with Lewis - in which case would Lewis use his boost button defensively? - or would he leave it until the last lap? Or would Lewis have let him past, then used his boost button the lap after when he knew Kimi would have had no reply because his system would be busy boosting itself back up?

One thing these proposals - which have come about only after the FIA talked with all six manufacturers currently in F1 - do underline is that this is now fully a car manufacturers' championship. Even mighty teams like McLaren are just chaff in the wind to the wishes of these entities and the age of the independent, ushered in by Cooper in the late 1950s, is now over.

As such, F1 is vulnerable to the whims of these car producers that do not rely on participation for their livelihood. But for a while, at least, there could be an exciting new era playing out in front of our eyes, where the big guns are throwing everything at an infant technology they need to master.

Gains are likely to be fast and dramatic, the competitive order could swing back and forth more often and with longer strokes than has been the case in decades. It may in time come to be known as 'the quiet era' because with engines running at less than 10,000rpm and their note further muffled by turbos, they are going to be dramatically quieter than current motors.

There is a possible purist downside to these proposals. The management of the engine/electrical combination will require extremely sophisticated software that will be constantly shuffling power from engine to motor/generators and vice versa, as well as from front-rear and vice versa.

As such, traction control will almost certainly return through the back door just three years after its supposed demise (next year). Standard ECUs won't be applicable here. But at least it's heartening that the much greater threat of stability control seems to have been acknowledged by the proposals stopping short of having electric motors at each wheel - which would have made controlling the attitude of the car into the corner very easy to accomplish.

If we follow the line of logic that has brought these proposals - reducing the necessary spend to be competitive, becoming greener, having more overtaking - then there is probably more to come. Already the FIA has acknowledged that in order to make the hybrid regs fully effective there need to be severe constraints on chassis and bodywork.

Taking this line of reasoning a step further, what about FIA-specified chassis, maybe supplied by an FIA-sanctioned supplier? So everyone has exactly the same chassis - no more time, money and valuable energy need be spent on honing aerodynamics that are totally F1-specific and nothing to do with road cars.

So the aerodynamics can be configured to make the racing good, so no team has a chassis advantage over anyone else. Sounds scarily feasible doesn't it? Especially for those teams with 800 employees and two windtunnels that would no longer be required.

It cuts at the very heart of what F1 has always been. But, like I say, I'm pretty sure F1 is headed into an entirely new era.