When Honda walked away from F1 at the end of 2008, followed by BMW and Toyota a year later, opinion was divided. Whilst some saw this as the end of manufacturer involvement in the sport and a return to the Garagistes, others felt that the vast sums of cash that had been pumped into F1 was actually destroying it.
Nonetheless, the sport needs the manufacturers, and the move towards a greener, environmentally aware, approach to the sport was seen as a means enticing them back.
Mercedes and Renault were both keen to see this new formula introduced, not only in terms of the technical challenge but as a means of bringing F1 cars and their road going, family carrying counterparts, closer together.
Though the sport is now in conflict as to whether the new formula is just a step too far, Gene Haas, whose team enters the sport in 2016, sees the return of Honda as a positive thing and hopes the series will attract more manufacturers.
"I would hope, from my own personal opinion, that we will get some of the bigger car suppliers to come back and bring engine packages," he told Auto Week. "I think having big manufacturers coming in and supplying engines makes a lot of sense because they don't necessarily make great teams but they make great engines and the stuff that costs a lot of money, so they can supply that to several teams. I think that's a pretty good way of doing it."
Despite the scare stories of cars failing to finish races due to the move towards fuel efficiency, other than the noise the new formula was a racing and technological success and in the second season should see even further improvements as these power units close the gap to their (relatively) unrefined predecessors.
"The more I have got into these cars, the more I like this technology," says Haas. "Companies make very sophisticated products these days and, quite frankly, your old classic internal combustion engine is just becoming obsolete.
"We need to move forward and we need new technologies. They are expensive and they are hard to develop, that's why I think it would be better if big name car companies got back into the sport and supplied that part of it so you would have competition between manufacturers. Then you would get competition between constructors and between drivers, and the more rivalry that you have, I think the more people will pay attention to it."
Talking of noise, whilst he disagrees with Bernie Ecclestone's claims regarding the new sound of F1, and the idea of returning to anything like the old formula, he appreciates and respects the F1 supremo's opinion.
"In Formula One they have these super high-performance engine packages and it costs a lot of money but at the same time, who wants to keep running regular old V8 and V10 combustion engines? It's almost like 1940s technology.
"There are some people who want it to go really high-tech and there are some people that want the noise. Some people that want better racing. You've got all these different opinions about which way Formula One should go and unfortunately everybody is going in different directions which is why having Bernie makes a lot of sense because he can say 'No, this is the direction I want you to go in.'"
Chris Balfe
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