Adrian Newey has criticised Formula One's move to hybrid engines, saying it was simply "marketing blurb" which will not benefit actual road products as it was supposed to.
F1 moved to V6 turbos in 2014 with a view to introducing new technologies which could be used by car manufacturers on consumer cars. Newey, Red Bull's technical chief, has been a long-term critic of the hybrid power units.
In an interview with Sky Sports F1, Newey said: "On the engine side, my personal opinion, which I'm sure will be a very controversial one, is that all this blurb which a few manufacturers would like to put out, that it improves their road car product, if that is the case then those manufacturers in the future, five years at the most, should be demonstrably ahead in the automotive sector of their rivals. Somehow l suspect that will not be the case, which tends to say it is marketing blurb."
The move to hybrid engines has led to spiralling costs for teams, but also had a restrictive token system which made it difficult for anyone to significantly cut the gap to Mercedes -- something Red Bull boss Christian Horner believes has been unhealthy for Formula One. Several smaller teams have pushed for the introduction of a budget cap to restrict spending, something new F1 owners Liberty Media have hinted at implementing in future.
However, Newey does think a budget cap is the way forward, and has instead suggested F1 looks to restrict resources in other ways.
"Is F1 a technical showcase for motor manufacturers, of their engine prowess for instance, or is it a spectacle that involves man and machine? Depending on who you are, you are one way or the other. My personal view is that it should be a battle of drivers coupled with the creativeness of engineers. That means it shouldn't purely be battle of resources, which is what it has tended to become on the engineers' side.
"It would be entirely possible to come up with a set of regulations that would reward creativity more than simply the number of people. A budget cap is very difficult to implement but you could come up with resource restrictions, certainly on the chassis side most of which aerodynamic driven.
"You could restrict research resources much more heavily than we do, perhaps scrap wind tunnels altogether, be much more restricted on the CFD runs, and if you restrict the resources there wouldn't be [any] point having so many engineers because they couldn't feed it through the funnel."