Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsToro Rosso

Key: Engine parity would improve racing

Toro Rosso technical director James Key says engine parity would be an obvious way to improve racing in F1.

New regulations planned for 2017 have been debated for a number of months, with concerns the original brief of faster and more aggressive-looking cars could be detrimental to the racing itself.

While talks are ongoing regarding next year's regulations, Key says the racing is always improved by having a closely-matched field from the front to the back and believes parity in terms of engine performance would help achieve that instantly.

"It's how close the cars are on the grid," Key told Sky Sports. "If you have a grid of 22 cars covered by a couple of seconds, you get tons of racing.

"Some circuits encourage this - Bahrain in 2014 was an absolutely cracking race. If you look at the qualifying, the front to the back was some of the closest it's ever been because that type of stop-start track brought that grid a little bit closer together and then the strengths of people's cars play out in different ways.

"So the thing that makes it most exciting is to have less of a gap from front to back, which means you've got less performance differences and it's more down to the driver - and to achieve that one of the things you need is engine parity."

The power unit token system is set to be scrapped in 2017, while there are no longer any areas which are unable to be developed in an attempt to provide engine manufacturers with a better chance of catching Mercedes.

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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.