In 2014 a new set engine regulations will be introduced. The 2.4L V8's will be replaced by a 1.6L V6 with a turbo. One of the forces behind the new regulations was Renault. The car manufacturer wanted F1 to closer represent its road cars. Renault Sport F1's Rob Whyte explains: "I think one of the conditions necessary for Renault to remain present in F1 was that F1 should move on and the family of, I prefer to say power unit, rather than engine, towards which we are now headed is something that creates a much clearer resonance with the products and the processes that we use for the cars that we sell to our customers in, I think it is, 118 markets worldwide."

Whyte is happy that the new rules are finally set in stone: "I think the first thing to say is that we are pleased now to have a fairly clear view of where we are going and the most important thing about the 2014 rules is that there are enough people who now understand them and know what we are getting into so that we can go ahead and do the work to deliver these engines in a sort of timely fashion and get all the cars on the grid prepared to go racing for the first race The fact that we made a bit of an adjustment from four cylinders in-line to six cylinders is, on one hand, a pretty major change."

He explains that the development of the new engines is already underway: "The first thing to say perhaps is that we were well underway with the previous programme, so substantial amounts of work from that go straight in the bin. Not all of it, thankfully. We try to recover what we can and re-orientate it to the new programme. As ever we may need to structure the engineering programme counting backwards from the first race in order to arrive in the most competitive possible state. Important to recognise that this is a massive technological change for the engine people in F1. Clean sheet of paper, new engine, fundamentally very different to its predecessor, hasn’t happened really since we made a switch in the opposite sense from turbo to normally aspirated engines way back at the end of the 1980s."

Whyte continued: "On the other hand it’s a relatively modest change. The fundamentals of the rules stay as we had in mind with a double limitation on fuel consumption with a fixed amount of fuel for the race, a fuel flow limit, a big contribution from energy recovery systems, electric only traction in the pit lane. We have got many of the same fundamental building blocks, albeit with a different engine architecture and a programme timing that I think suits more people better than the original programme timing."