Pirelli believe they are able to offer a four-second gain from tyres alone, without the need for the cars to undergo major redesigns for the 2017 season.
The sport is looking to decrease laptimes by between five and six seconds in future, with new regulations proposed which would bring about wider cars, wider wings and aggressive looks.
However Pirelli has offered up another solution which it believes would get close to the five-six second goal, whilst doing away with costly regulation changes which would hit the smaller teams hardest.
Pirelli’s Paul Hembery reckons they could find four-seconds through wider tyres and compound development alone.
“If you want to increase performance, we can do that,” the Briton told Autosport.
“Just by the tyre size change we will probably gain two seconds,” he explained. “If you then gave us a proper testing programme, probably by the tyres alone, and with a natural evolution of the current car, we can deliver four seconds.
“It would be cheaper for everybody, and cheaper if they helped us do that than for everybody to redesign all the cars.”
The 2017 rules, which are currently being drafted, already include wider tyres, but Mercedes admitted it had safety concerns over the potential downforce increase putting too much load through the tyres.
Therefore a short-term solution would be to simply keep the cars as they are.
“As a minimum you could just say ‘change the tyre sizes and stick with the current regulations’,” added Hembery. “It then becomes a modification of the suspension.
“At least three teams have said they could modify a current car to at least take the tyre sizes if they were given enough notice without going the full packet of changing all the aero.”
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