Nikolas Tombazis, formerly of Ferrari and now technical director for single-seater racing at Formula 1's governing body, the FIA, hopes the sport can drop the controversial DRS overtaking aid from 2021.

He, along with a research group created by Liberty Media's managing director of motorsport Ross Brawn, has been working on an overhaul of F1's aerodynamic regulations with the aim of allowing closer racing by negating the current issue of turbulent air impacting a driver following another car and making it hard for him to attempt an overtake.

With the designs of wings getting ever more complex, this is an issue that has affected the sport for almost two decades and in 2011, DRS was brought in as a way to solve the problem.

Effectively, it works by reducing the drag of a car following within one second of another by opening a flap on the rear wing that allows for a much higher top speed to drive through the dirty air and pass the driver in front at certain points around each circuit.

However, it has always been seen by many as artificial and gimmicky and that is what has spurred this new effort to make its presence no longer necessary.

"It is right that there's this underlying discomfort with DRS, and I share it as well," Tombazis was quoted by Autosport after a press conference on Thursday. "I know Ross [Brawn] has made similar comments.

"For 2021 we hope that the cars will be much more able to follow each other closely, and it will be a really nice outcome if we can severely decrease DRS in the future, or even eliminate it.

"But until we get in a position where we are comfortable enough with the wake performance and how cars can follow each other, I think it's something that I would perhaps call a necessary evil at the moment."

In fact, the effect of DRS will actually be increased before any effort is made to eradicate it, with the F1 Commission surprisingly passing a number of changes to the wings for 2019.

The introduction of a wider, simpler front wing is aimed at reducing its sensitivity to the turbulent air and allow a car to run more closely.

Meanwhile, the rear wing will also be widened and become deeper with the flap made bigger to allow for a greater gain in speed down the straights.

"The DRS effect will increase by approximately 25-30%," Tombazis claimed.

FIA race director Charlie Whiting hopes the changes will help to improve racing at all circuits.

"The main advantage to us is we'll be able to make the DRS effective on shorter straights," he said.

"At the moment we're trying to lengthen zones where we can, in places like Melbourne for example, maybe an extra DRS zone in Canada - those are the sort of places where with this extra power from the DRS we should be able to make them work a bit better."

The impact of the aerodynamic changes, however, will also mean that the record lap times today's cars are setting could well be unmatched in the future.

"We expect to lose about 1.5 seconds [in lap time compared to 2018] maybe," Tombazis suggested.

"It’s a bit difficult to predict exactly the amount of development the teams will put on [the 2019 cars], but we certainly expect to lose performance."