As the current season approaches its halfway stage, a number of teams are making decisions about when to switch over all their efforts to the 2017 project.

While an early focus on new rules paid huge dividends for Brawn in 2009 and Mercedes in 2014, Symonds suspects that the advantages for those committing first to 2017 will not be as great.

"What you've got to remember is what's changed in the last few years in the aerodynamics is that every single team can now only do 65 runs a week in the wind tunnel," said Symonds.

"Now, if you go back to the last big change in 2009, they could run as much time as they wanted in the wind tunnel. Some teams used two wind tunnels - like Toyota: two wind tunnels, 24/7. That's quite something and that's quite a differentiator.

"When we've moved on to 2014, we could at that time do 80 runs a week in the wind tunnel. Now we can only do 65 runs – so there's an awful lot of equalisation going on.

"Yeah, you've still got to choose your 65 runs well, you've got to do the right things, but I think it doesn't quite allow the sort of runaway development that we'd had seven years ago."

Good-looking cars

Although Symonds is sceptical about whether the new generation of faster cars will be any better for overtaking, he does think they will offer a visual appeal.

"I like it, I like what the cars are going to look like and all that sort of stuff," he said. "I think technically it's going to be quite interesting. I like change.

"Whether it's what the sport needs or not - I don't think it's going to do much for the racing."