Ross Brawn wants to create a research group to better understand overtaking and wean Formula One away from artificial aids such as the Drag Reduction System (DRS).
In his new role as F1's managing director, motorsport, Brawn has been tasked with helping to shape the future direction of the sport's regulations. The former Mercedes team principal has ruled out making any knee-jerk reactions to the set of regulations set to debut at the Australian Grand Prix in March, and instead wants to invest in a better long-term understanding of how to improve wheel-to-wheel racing.
"One of the things I want to do within FOM is to create the capacity to study those things," he told Maurice Hamilton in an exclusive ESPN interview. "FOM's never had that capacity and has always had to take the opinions given to it by other parties.
"The FIA do a little bit of that, but what I would like to do is create a small group of people within FOM that have the experience and the knowledge to look at those problems and those challenges so that we have our own opinion on what could be the solution.
"We would work with the teams and the FIA of course, but we would also have some knowledge ourselves. I don't know how deep that will go because there are limitations on how much you can do."
A similar project, known as the Overtaking Working Group, was set up by the FIA in the mid-2000s and resulted in the 2009 technical regulations. The aims of the group never really came to fruition and it was not until the introduction of quick-degrading Pirelli tyres and the DRS in 2011 that the number of overtakes increased dramatically in F1.
But Brawn believes there is a difference between quantity and quality when it comes to overtaking.
"I'm not a great fan of DRS if I'm honest. It artificially solved a problem that we didn't want to tackle head on. It doesn't have the quality or merit of a full-on overtaking manoeuvre, the fact that you can press a button and get past almost means we never see those full-on [overtaking manoeuvres]. We don't know when something has been a really quality overtake because they are all button-induced now. There are other bits of the circuit where sometimes that happens and you think 'blimey, that's great' because you know it wasn't DRS and someone has dived up the inside of a corner or something."
This season will see F1 cars with more aerodynamic performance than ever before as the sport chases a five second reduction in lap times. Brawn believes the 2017 regulations will be a useful test case to see whether certain theories about overtaking hold true, but has ruled out any knee-jerk reactions.
"I think 2017 is going to be very interesting, because from what I perceive we have moved in that direction again -- to higher levels of aerodynamics -- and I think we will get a perfect example of whether that is going to improve or worsen the situation. So we've got a field test going on next year in the racing season to see.
"It may well shake the order up a bit, and that's one thing that's important, but if we end up with cars that are going to become even more difficult to race with each other then I think we have got to take that as a clear indication that there is a rethink needed in the long-term. I don't want any of these things to happen in a knee-jerk manner for the next year because that will disadvantage somebody and we don't want to do that. We want to have changes planned over a long enough time that nobody feels they are disadvantaged and so they can join in the process and support it."
Brawn said the whole discussion around overtaking could ultimately result in some big changes for the long-term future of the sport.
"It is definitely a topic that I would like to engage everyone on and find a solution. That's pretty fundamental because it may involve the ratio between aerodynamics and mechanical grip. I've sat on both sides and aerodynamics are a very appealing element to car design. If you keep your wind tunnel programme going, the numbers keep ratcheting up and you know you are going to go faster if you get the numbers a bit higher. It's addictive.
"So, people are not going to want to give that up easily, but it may be an aspect that we are going to have to look at -- the ratio of aerodynamics and mechanical grip. Everybody has been saying the same thing for some time, but we have never bit the bullet."