Toro Rosso's James Key says the upcoming 2017 rule changes are the biggest he's ever experienced in the sport, since he began his career almost 20 years ago with Jordan.
The sport has been through many changes over the previous two decades, including a major regulation overhaul in 2009 which saw the introduction of KERS and completely new aero rules. Whilst 2014 also saw big changes to the way the cars looked and a new engine formula.
Key believes the changes happening next year however are far bigger with the introduction of wider tyres, larger and lower wings, more aggressive styling and larger diffusers.
"It's a massive change," he said. "Honestly, from a bodywork and suspension and tyre point of view, this is the biggest one that I've personally experienced in almost 19 years in F1.
"From a chassis point of view, it's the biggest change of the past two decades, even bigger than 2009 and certainly bigger than 2014."
He revealed that work began on Toro Rosso's 2017 car more than a year ago as they've had to start with an almost completely blank canvas due to the scale of the changes.
"We tentatively started the 2017 project in September 2015, so it's been 14 months so far. Back then, the chassis regulations hadn't been finalised but we thought that with any change of this nature, the sooner you start, the better.
"We knew the tyres would be wider and we had dimensions then of what we were going to work to. These also got refined, but not to a huge degree. We started work conceptually on this around September 2015, really just to see what it meant and then as the regs evolved, we changed our plans accordingly. By the time the car hits the track, it will have been a 17-month project."
