Both Ferrari and McLaren expect the current supremacy of the top three teams to continue initially under the 2021 regulations.
Next year will see one of the biggest overhauls in Formula 1 history with a new car design, financial regulations and more still to be agreed.
The main ambition with these changes is to end the domination of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull, who have won every race since Kimi Raikkonen and Lotus at the 2013 Australian Grand Prix.
But Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto believes the factors that led to the current two-tier structure of the F1 grid will still be too influential.
“These new rules will provide stability to F1 for the next five years, but next year I think the teams with more resources will have a competitive advantage over the others,” he told Italy’s La Gazzetta dello Sport. “In 2021, the scenario will not be very different from what we have today.
“Certainly the new regulations are designed in such a way that the degree of freedom of development will be greatly reduced compared to today,” the Swiss would concede, however.
“I am quite convinced that we will arrive at a ceiling of performance soon enough and within three years of the regulations’ introduction, the performance gap between the first and last will be reduced.
“In short, the goal that Liberty Media has set itself to level the playing field can be achieved, but it won’t happen immediately.”
McLaren is one of those teams hoping the new regulations and budget cap will allow them to end the domination of the top three teams.
But on a similar note as Binotto, CEO Zak Brown agrees the pecking order is likely to stay unchanged initially.
“We’ve still got a lot to work on. We started last season more than 1.5 seconds off pole and towards the end of the year it was as low as eight tenths,” he commented.
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“That’s still a big gap we need to close and then, come 2021, it’s going to be the biggest reset in the recent history of Formula 1 and I think that’s going to be exciting.
“Not only for us, I think it’s going to be exciting for everyone who follows the sport.
“Again, with the budget cap coming in, that will help, but that’s not really going to settle in until 2022 and 2023,” the American cautioned.
“So, while we’re making forward progress up the field, it’s going to get harder the nearer we get to the front but all the men and women at McLaren are up for it.”