Formula One's Strategy Group will debate on Thursday whether to increase the engine allocation per driver from four to five this year.
Under the engine regulations laid out ahead of the switch to V6 turbos last year, the amount of power units each driver is allowed to use over the course of the season dropped from five in 2014 to four in 2015. As it stands, if a driver uses more than four of any of the listed components making up the power unit - internal combustion engine (ICE), turbocharger, MGU-K, MGU-H, energy store and control electronics - he receives a ten-place penalty.
After five races, both Red Bull drivers and Max Verstappen are on their fourth ICE while McLaren's drivers have used three of their turbochargers and MGU-Hs. As a result it is inevitable several drivers will receive at least one ten-place penalty this year and as a response teams have already started limiting the amount of Friday practice time each car has to protect the components.
A proposal for a fifth power unit to encourage teams to run on Friday received unanimous agreement in Malaysia according to Red Bull's Christian Horner, but since then it seems several teams have had a change in heart. Smaller outfits - especially those with the more reliable Mercedes and Ferrari power units - do not want the additional cost of an extra power unit and are also the most likely to benefit from any grid penalties for rivals. Force India, which is one of six teams to sit on the Strategy Group, will almost certainly vote against a fifth engine.
"I know it's on the agenda but I have no idea what the wording is," Force India's Bob Fernley told Reuters at the last round in Spain. "And more importantly I don't know what the cost implications are, because that will be the key to it That's why Williams wouldn't want it, why Lotus wouldn't want it and why we wouldn't want it."
One proposal backed by Mercedes is to only make the fifth engine available for Friday practice sessions, but McLaren's Jonathan Neale is not convinced such a watered-down change to the rules would get the necessary agreement.
"If it goes to five engines with a thousand strings attached and complex other paraphernalia around it, I don't think it will go. We would obviously benefit from it because we're in a situation where, as a new entrant to the sport with Honda, we would very much like that additional fifth engine and we think that would be fair for us.
"I'm pretty sure Renault would feel the same way. They're investing in the sport, they're a big organisation, it's important for their brand as well that they have some degree of glide-path on this but it's a fair race for everybody and I accept that. If it's four it's four, if it's five it's five."
Even Red Bull's chief engineer Paul Monaghan, whose team uses Renault power units and would benefit from the change the most, seems resigned to the fifth engine proposal failing.
"Personally, I would support the fifth engine," he said. "The strategy group is the first step of three to a rule change. If it proceeds, all well and good. If it doesn't you play the hand you're dealt."