Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsTechnical

More in-season development freedom for power units

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Engine manufacturers will be allowed more freedom to develop their F1 power units until the 2019 season.

Following a meeting of the World Motor Sport Council [WMSC] in Paris on Wednesday a change to the token system was ratified. Manufacturers will have more tokens to use over the next four seasons than had been originally planned when the regulations were introduced in 2014, theoretically providing the likes of Renault and Honda with a better chance of closing the gap to Mercedes.

With in-season development allowed, power unit manufacturers will once again be allowed 32 development tokens in 2016, with the number decreasing year-on-year until 2019 as follows:

2016 – 32
2017 – 25
2018 – 20
2019 – 15

Originally the regulations only allowed 25 development tokens to be spent ahead of the 2016 season, with manufacturers having to homologate their power units by the end of February next year.

Any new power unit manufacturer will be allowed 15 tokens to spend on in-season development in their first year in F1, with that number increased to 32 tokens for their second year.

Honda entered the sport at the start of this year and was given nine tokens for development after the FIA worked out the average remaining tokens of the other three power unit manufacturers.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.