Mercedes executive director Paddy Lowe says 2016's new exhaust regulations will deliver "significant increases" in engine noise.
One of the biggest criticisms levelled at the V6 turbo engines since their introduction in 2014 has been the lower sound compared to their V8 or V10 predecessors. In the last two years the turbos have only required one exhaust pipe at the rear of the car but tweaked regulations state teams must now incorporate at one or two additional wastegate pipe exits.
The change was made in a bid to ramp up the noise of the current generation of engines and will likely be one of the biggest points of innovation across the grid this year. Lowe thinks the changes have been successful in delivering louder power units.
"In the last two years we've had a situation where the main exhaust goes through one tailpipe," Lowe said. "Then we have a thing called the wastegate, which is a way of spilling out any extra pressure from the exhaust system when it's not wanted to be used by the turbo.
"[Now] we have to duct that air separately through an extra tailpipe, and this is all intended to make more noise, so we're trying to make the engine louder. It will work, and we'll see how much louder they'll be. Some measurements have been made in labs and they've seen some significant increases.
"The reason for that is the wastegate was causing a sort of silencing of the main exhaust pipe, so by removing it from the main exhaust pipe we have less silencing going on of the main flow."
Lowe was speaking on Mercedes' latest video ahead of the new season.