Formula 1 bosses met on Friday evening to discuss the sport’s future, particularly the changes agreed during the Strategy Group meeting last month.
Whilst the return of refuelling has been scrapped following unanimous agreement on Thursday, F1 will push ahead with wider cars, wider tyres and an overall speed increase.
McLaren’s Ron Dennis arranged a meeting on Friday attended by Eric Boullier, Toto Wolff, Niki Lauda, Christian Horner, Maurizio Arrivabene and the FIA’s Charlie Whiting.
Come the conclusion of the meeting, which lasted around 80 minutes, information began to emerge with confirmation that cars will increase from 1,800mm to 2,000mm.
This is aimed at making the cars look more aggressive, but it was agreed this alone wont’ be enough. Further discussion is required with Wolff advising that they have two choices, to either tackle looks through the technical regulations, or a set of aesthetic design regulations.
Meanwhile rear tyres will increase from 380mm to 420mm. This will contribute to the look of the cars, but is primarily aimed at increasing mechanical grip and therefore overall pace.
The controversial ‘customer car’ programme – or ‘franchise cars’ as they will officially be known – was also up for discussion during the meeting.
Bernie Ecclestone’s two-tier proposal, which would have seen smaller outfits running standardised cars, didn’t gain much support and is therefore unlikely to happen.
But the idea of current manufacturers offering a chassis for a set fee of around €50 million (£36m, $55m) per season did gain some traction amongst team bosses.
Though a manufacturer can only supply one team, therefore they can’t have more than four cars on the grid, whilst current independents would be given preferential treatment over new entrants.
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