Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn is against a new proposal to provide an alternative "budget" engine in Formula One.
After a cost cap on the current power units was vetoed by Ferrari, the FIA announced this week that it would look into finding an independent manufacturer to provide a low-cost engine. If the plans go ahead, the budget engine will be built to a separate set of regulations to keep costs down and an equivalency formula will be put in place to balance performance with the current engines.
Sauber has argued in favour of cost controls for several years, but Kaltenborn does not think the FIA's plans, which were originally proposed by Bernie Ecclestone, are the way forward.
"It's the right thing to say that the new engine has been one of the major cost drivers, increasing the cost from 2013 to 2014, but it's just at the moment so vague," she said. "I don't think it's right to have two different engines, because I know from our past experience with a manufacturer [BMW] that they would not want to be in a championship with two different types of engines, they would not have wanted to even come into such a championship.
"I'm very careful about this, because apart from all these issues I wonder how, technically, you can get any kind of equivalency in here. It is not that easy to just say this is the power output and you can try to find an equivalency because you start playing with the weight of the car and the fuel flow, you start playing with refuelling and you have to look at your car from a very different perspective, even aerodynamically. I don't see how this is possible, so I'm in no position to say this is something I would take up or not."
Kaltenborn also thinks it would be bad for the image of Formula One to allow a relatively inefficient engine to compete on a level playing field with the technologically advanced hybrids currently in use.
"If you look from the bigger perspective of the sport, we are not going to look that good if we start taking moves away from a technology that is relevant in the market today. When people go out there and buy cars, they want to look at efficiency, the green impact and all these kinds of things. Formula One is there to represent the high-end technologies and people do value this.
"We have seen in some cases that people have decided to pay more for a car thinking it has better values and that has involved a big scandal that has come out, so people do look at these things and we should not seclude ourselves from this reality. I don't think it is right to, without having a very concrete vision of where you want to go, just start these discussions."
Although the idea was vetoed by Ferrari, Kaltenborn thinks the FIA should stick by its original plan to cap the cost of the existing engines at €10 million -- roughly half the current price and the same as the old V8s and KERS units used in 2013.
"I guess since we have the hybrid engine -- like it or not, we have it -- so you have to find a way there. You have to stop the development of it. Other series do it, if you look at DTM, again it might be right or wrong, but they saw what the discrepancies were between one team and the next and they agreed to put in some kind of rule in there to allow somebody to catch up. You have to maybe allow that and then stop, but if you continue free development there is no way you will be able to have an engine in there that is affordable, unless you make the agreement in there where customers get the engine at a set price. If you develop for 100 million or 50 million, it's your problem and you would have done it anyway. If you are Ferrari you don't need a Sauber to do that, you would do it anyway. That is the only realistic way, to say 'This is the price for a customer and the rest is up to you, do your own business model around that'."