Norris also described how the hybrid power units can penalise drivers who are pushing the limit, eking out the final 1% or 2% from their cars in qualifying. “You’re trying to brake as late as possible everywhere, you’re trying to get on the throttle everywhere… do those little things to be as much on the limit as possible at all times,” he said.

“Those 1 or 2% are the special 1 or 2% that make it exciting, that might surprise you, in terms of this guy’s suddenly on pole because he’s taken those couple little risks and you’ve kind of taken that element away.

“In Shanghai, where it gripped up a little more, I cracked open the throttle 5, 10 metres earlier. Feels good, you see the delta coming down. You get to the straight and you’re just slower. That doesn’t feel good inside the car. You’re like, ‘I did a better job here, I took that risk, I balanced the car. I felt like I was trying to find perfection and then you just pay with a silly penalty of going 10km/h slower down the straight and you lose more than you ever gain”.

“It’s not the way we kind of perfectly want, comparing to previous years when I think it was very nice, but it’s also the way it is.”

Both drivers welcomed the changes being introduced in Miami, which include a reduction in the amount of energy that can be harvested per qualifying lap from 8MJ to 7MJ, and an increased rate of superclipping — where more than half of the internal combustion engine’s power is used to charge the battery under full throttle — from 250kW to 350kW. These measures should cut the amount of time that drivers spend harvesting energy on a qualifying lap.

The amount of power available through the manual boost function is also reduced: previously uncapped, drivers can only access a maximum of 150kW of extra power by pressing boost to reduce closing speeds.

“It was quite clear to see from onboards and from our comments that it wasn’t the challenge that it should have been,” said Piastri. “In the race, there’s a lot of changes of position, but it’s a bit random.

“We had ideas of other changes… They’re from year to year or even longer term”

“I think some of the tweaks have hopefully removed some of those problems.”

“For us as drivers, the two main things we wanted addressing was reinstating that challenge in qualifying and being able to reduce the closing speeds and the speed differences in the race, in unexpected places.

“The FIA took it very seriously. F1 took it very seriously, and that’s reflected in some of the changes.

“We’ll have to wait and see if we need further changes. I think we probably had ideas of other things that you could change, but they’re not things you can change from one weekend to the next. They’re, you know, from year to year, or, you know, even, even longer term than that.”

Those further changes would be needed to address the criticism over artificial overtaking that we’ve seen this season, where cars are passing and re-passing as a result of battery energy levels rather than classic overtaking techniques.

McLaren’s technical director of performance, Mark Temple, said that energy deployment would still play a crucial role in modern racing: “I think there are still some aspects of driving with the new power units which will remain because it is still — energy starved is perhaps too strong a word — but a formula where you want to use the energy that you have in the most efficient places, which is slightly different to previous years, where you could disregard it and just in a way, not worry about the power unit and the energy available.”

Further rule tweaks could be made in the coming races, according to Stella, who also said that discussions are already taking place about larger changes that would fundamentally improve the energy situation, although these may not be seen for years.

“Once we observe the outcome and the effect of this package of changes [from Miami], we may have learned more about the new regulation and further tuning may be required,” said Stella.

“We should have the openness and the proactivity to study this further improvement and put them in place.

“I think in order to have a more substantial improvement whereby we reduce some of the for instance, a 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.

“Once you act on the hardware from a battery capacity point of view, for instance, or in terms of the [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 are 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.”