Jon Noble

It's simpler, it's cheaper.

Drivers love it because if we get the drivers happy with the cars, if they're happy with the racing, if they're driving flat out again, then that's only a good thing for F1.

Yeah, people can complain about manufacturers increasing costs and making things too corporate.

But in terms of the value they bring to Formula One, the marketing budgets, the ability to spend loads of money on the best drivers, the coverage they give, the investment, the way they push things on.

I think F1 is better having more manufacturers than just having a standard engine, for example.

I think it would lose an awful lot if it was just the teams and a standard engine.

that had no relevance at all to the road car industry.

But I think there are ways of having the relevance that goes beyond simply the win on Sunday, sell on Monday.

But as you mentioned, the training of engineers, the understanding, you don't have to have your VA engine that gets slotted into a road car, but your understanding of creating that engine can get transferred across.

New technologies can get transferred across and new concepts and new ideas.

So

But I think a V8 with a smaller electrical component is more than enough to claim it's road-relevant.

It depends, I think, on the kind of how much division there is in terms of what the basic concepts should be.

If all the manufacturers sit around a table and say, okay, it's going to be this ICE at 600 horsepower and we'll have a 250 horsepower electrical component and this is what we end up with, or we agree on a certain percentage, if they're lined up,

and it makes sense, then they can fast track it.

The difficulty will come if there's divided opinions, because that will then drag things back and drag things, extend the discussions, make things more complicated.

So I think we'll know pretty quickly, i.e.

within this year, I think, whether we're looking at 2030, because all the manufacturers are in broad agreement, or if we're going to have to wait a bit longer, because the details often stop these things happening quite quickly coming to the fore.

Yeah, in theory, you can do what you want for 2031.

But if you can't have a ludicrous rule set that doesn't interest car manufacturers, they'll just happily walk away and then you're left with no engines, which is quite a difficult way to run a Formula One championship.