Haas team boss Guenther Steiner says next year's all-new F1 designs will not be "spec cars", insisting the sport's 2022 technical regulations still leave room for development.
Formula 1 will undergo a transformation next season with the introduction of a new regulation platform based on a radical new design philosophy, with a simpler approach to aerodynamics devised to tighten the field and improve the show on the track.
Although teams have welcomed the change, Red Bull design guru Adrian Newey - a man who penned more winning designs in F1 than any other engineer - has criticized the restrictive nature of the new rules and their limited scope for innovation.
But Steiner has played down the fears that Formula 1 could turn into a spec series, à la IndyCar.
"As much as we think it’s a spec car, it's not really a spec car," Steiner recently said.
"A lot of interpretation of it is like, 'Yeah, it is a spec car', but it is not. There is still a lot of room for development. It is not like an IndyCar [where] you cannot do anything.
"You have still got room to do things and it will be less noticeable, to be honest, when people do different things, because the devil is in the detail.
"I wouldn't compare it with an IndyCar because that is obviously a spec car. A Formula 2 car is a spec car, but a Formula 1 car… there is a lot of work and areas you can work on still in the new regulations."
Formula 1 rolled out a full-scale profile car during the British Grand Prix weekend to allow the sport's fans to get a glimpse of the aesthetics of next year's contender.
But Steiner believes that each team's individual 2022 design will be significantly more developed than the model showcased last month at Silverstone.
"What you saw was a principle of a car, how the base will look like, but the cars will be quite developed," said the Italian.
"When a hundred engineers work on that, a few hundred engineers in each team work hard on it, they find places if they have got an opportunity to do something different.
"So it will be still very competitive, technically, as well."
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