Formula 1 chief Ross Brawn believes the sport's new regulations for 2021 will make a "remarkable" and "dramatic" difference to racing, and says several new teams are interested in joining the grid.
The 2021 rules will be finalised in October after years of research and negotiations with teams about the next major F1 overhaul, with Brawn and his team confident of delivering a more sustainable and competitive championship, as well as more exciting races from the new cars.
F1's main goal was to make following cars easier with a much lower wake disruption and unsophisticated front and rear wings, and they released the latest look at a 2021 car earlier this month.
While Brawn says that model will "look more dynamic" come October, he believes the wind tunnel tests have confirmed that the changes will improve overtaking.
"It's made a remarkable difference in the ability of one car to follow the other," the F1 managing director told Sky Sports F1. "It really is going to make a change."
Brawn, a highly-respected former F1 team boss, continued: "When you hear the drivers talking about the tyres behaving badly, a lot of that is just the inconsistency of performance and the level of performance loss when they follow each other.
"It'll make a dramatic difference. At the moment you almost have this protection bubble, once you go near it you can't get any closer."
Brawn says those aerodynamic changes are "all fixed" and only "details" need to be finalised before the end of October.
F1's last major rules reset came in 2017, while Mercedes have won each of the last five titles.
Will any new teams join in 2021?
"We have a surprising number of teams that have shown an interest," said Brawn about prospective teams joining the sport.
But he also stressed that the rules needed to be stabilised, 10 teams was "enough", and that he would only want new teams if they are going to "add" to the sport.
"What we've said to these teams is: let's get these rules introduced, let's stabilise the situation, let's get everything working properly before we seek more teams," Brawn explained.
"I think 10 healthy teams in Formula 1 is actually enough, and if we do get any extra teams they've got to really add to the show.
"We must remember the history. So many small teams came and went and didn't really add to Formula 1."
'Teams recognise we need a change'
"The objective of the regulations is to make a much more raceable car but also behind the scenes to improve the economic impact that the car has," said Brawn - stating that the new cars will feature many "standardised" and "prescriptive" parts to help cut costs in the sport.
As he put it: "If you can't see it, why do you need to spend any money on it?"
"We've left the suspension, we've left the bodywork, we've left the things that create the differentials between the cars," he added.
"But the things that seem to cost a lot of money and everyone seems to do individually - for instance the fuel pump is actually a very expensive part on the car, and if everyone used the same fuel pump we'd make quite a lot of savings."
F1's previous June deadline for the technical, sporting and financial regulations was pushed back to October following discussions with all 10 teams and the FIA, and there have been concerns that the teams are trying to have too much of a say in the new rules.
"When you sit down and discuss these things at detail with the teams, there are some disagreements," Brawn admitted. "But I wouldn't say they're at a level that teams aren't going to accept the change. I think they all recognise that we need to make this chance to bring a more sustainable economic model to Formula 1.
"There has been segregation between the three teams at the front that have all the funding and the rest of the field."
Asked if teams would be worried about their creative licence on cars due to "prescriptive" parts, Brawn replied: "I think there's always some anxiety in the teams that they feel the regulations are prescriptive.
"I was on that side of the fence and I can understand their frustration. But what I'm sure will happen is once they get the regulations, and they start spending a lot of time on it, they're going to find all the nuances and all the variations that they need."
Could the race weekend format change?
Brawn also spoke about the prospect of making changes to race weekends - particularly with more races being added to the calendar. There are set to be 22 races in 2019, while F1's owners Liberty Media have spoken about expanding to 24.
"We want the cars to run on a Friday but is there a way of shortening the weekend from an operational point of view for the teams?" pondered Brawn as he talked about restricting the amount of time the teams were at the circuit.
"Could we have two slightly shorter sessions on a Friday afternoon?"
Brawn believes the 2020 season, in which there will be few changes to the cars, can be used as a trial for several new ideas.
"I'd like to see us try a few new things in 2020," he stated. "I think in 2020 we've got a stable platform in terms of the cars, things aren't changing that much, and it could be good at one or two races to try some variations.
"I don't see any logical way that we progress the race format, I think it's good, but would a sprint race be interesting or would some variation in qualifying be interesting?
"I think the teams are up for doing some variations during a Saturday to see if we could touch on a better solution."