McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has welcomed tweaks to Formula 1's new technical regulations ahead of next month's Miami Grand Prix, but says the sport must remain open to a more extensive rethink of its controversial power units in future seasons.
F1 made a major overhaul of its engine regulations this year, introducing hybrid engines with a near 50/50 split between electric power and combustion power.
During preseason testing, Stella raised concerns about the potential shortcomings of the new power units, all of which played out in the opening three races of the season.
Earlier this week, the sport agreed to make relatively small changes to the regulations linked to limits on the harvesting and deployment of electric power in order to limit unusual driving practices in qualifying and reduce the risk of dangerously high closing speeds between cars in races.
F1 will also use the Miami Grand Prix to trial a safety mechanism within the rules to prevent start line collisions linked to difficulties getting the new generation of cars away from the line.
Stella said the changes should help in the areas he highlighted in preseason, but called on the sport to consider physical changes to the hardware of the power units for future seasons.
"I think the changes that are implemented for Miami are a positive step in the right direction, tendentially addressing all these elements that we had already highlighted during the testing Bahrain," Stella said.
"I think Formula 1 as a community should remain quite open that once we observe the outcome and the effect of this package of changes, we may have learned more about the new regulation and further tuning may be required, and we should have the openness and the proactivity to study this further improvement and put them in place.
"And finally, there should be a consideration for some hardware changes, more for the longer term, such that we can place the operating point of the power unit somewhere where less compromises are required from a chassis point of view or from a driving point of view.
"We think this is possible, and we think that all stakeholders should approach this conversation with the willingness to contribute."
The main limitations of the new power units stem from the rulemakers desire to have a 50/50 split between electric and combustion power while relying on relatively small four megajoule batteries.
At the first three races, the unbalanced formula routinely saw drivers deplete their power unit's batteries midway down straights, meaning they would slow long before braking zones as they recharged.
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The changes for Miami are expected to limit unusual driving practices on qualifying laps, but Stella believes changes to the power units themselves -- be it bigger batteries or allowing more fuel to the engine to alter the 50/50 split -- should be considered for future seasons.
"I think in order to have a more substantial improvement whereby we reduce some of the, for instance, shortage from an energy point of view or the fact that in high-speed corners sometimes you don't have much deceleration between the braking point and the mid-corner speed, there may be some need to act on the hardware," he said.
"But once you act on the hardware from a battery capacity point of view, for instance, or in terms of the ICE [internal combustion engine] accepting more fuel flow, then this requires more time than from one race to the other and possibly more time even than from one season to the other.
"There's certainly conversations already happening as to how the hardware can be more fundamentally improved such that the regulations allow more margin to fulfil the various objectives which are required for the spectacle and entertainment, but also for making sure that the drivers can drive in a traditional sense of pushing the car to the limit."