Mercedes engine boss Andy Cowell says it is important Formula One's regulations continue to allow enough scope for development so that other manufacturers can catch up.
Mercedes has dominated F1 under the current set of engine regulations, prompting a rethink this year to help struggling manufacturers close the gap. Areas of engine development that were due to be frozen this season (known as black boxes in reference to an appendices in the original regulations that mapped out the progressive freeze of the power unit's components) have been opened up again to ensure no development avenues are blocked off to the likes of Renault and Honda.
Ahead of plans to ditch the token system altogether in 2017, manufacturers are restricted to spending 32 development tokens in the 2016 season -- the same as in 2015 -- although that still allows significant scope for improvement over the year, as proven by Ferrari's resurgence in 2015.
"The regulations have now changed so that for this year the black boxes have disappeared, so you can work on any area of development inside the token restriction," Cowell said. "This year we have 32 tokens; you can spend them all at Melbourne if you want, spend them all at Abu Dhabi if you like or you can do what you like in between. But there are no exclusion zones or black boxes.
"Why did we remove the black boxes? That was removed because we didn't want any of the manufacturers to be locked into a situation where they have got a good idea but they can't introduce it because of the black box. We don't want a scenario where any of us say we can't catch up because of the rules. I think any set of rules that make it harder for people to catch up is bad."
However, the changes to the regulations this year have not tempted Mercedes to revisit the black box areas.
"When we were faced with the rules for 2014 there was a big focus to make sure we put as much performance in as possible knowing we wouldn't be able to do any more during the season, and we put a lot of effort into the areas we knew would become restricted under the black boxes," Cowell added. "Those black boxes were put in the technology areas where we thought there wouldn't be appetite for change and the combustion area stays white forever.
"One of the black boxes was the architecture of the crankshaft and the position of cylinder one compared to that plain because we said after two years we should probably stop messing around with that."