The debate on whether Formula 1 should have switched back to last year's tyre specification is continuing despite a final vote.

In Austria, teams were split 5-5 right down political lines after a push by Ferrari and Red Bull to abandon 2019's thinner-treaded compounds led to the FIA calling a meeting.

That fell short of the seven votes needed to enforce the change, with heir argument has been that the move by Pirelli has directly favoured Mercedes, who have won eight of the first nine races.

“It puts Pirelli in a slightly difficult position,” Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan told Crash.net.

“They’re doing a decent job, they’re going to win every race, the tyres are surviving on the cars and they’ve got to maintain their safety record.

“At the risk of being slightly controversial, we would quite happily accept the 2018 tyres to come back. I don’t think the risk is as great as some perceive.

“It is about creating a show and I think we almost have to take a step back and take a slightly less team-centric position and turn around and say ‘well if it would be better for the show, could the teams cope with it’ and our opinion is yes, we could," he added.

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On the other side, McLaren was one of the five teams to vote against the move with team boss Andreas Seidl claiming F1 should be focused on other issues.

“I think in general we have a far bigger issue which is this big gap we have between the top teams and the midfield. That is also where our focus is on,” he said via GPFans.com.

“This is something that cannot be solved in the short term, so we have big hopes for all the changes that are on the table on the financial side, technical side, sporting side, regarding the regulations in ’21.

“Hopefully F1 and the FIA with all the experts which they now have onboard, which is a unique situation, they pull through. We fully support the changes that have been sent out some weeks ago and that is our focus, to be honest.”

As for Pirelli, they too are looking forward, revealing the 2020 tyres could be fast-tracked to appease teams' unhappiness.

"We can supply two additional sets of prototype tyres for evaluation during Friday," motorsport boss Mario Isola noted to Motorsport Week.

“There was also discussion to slightly change the regulations, to understand if different tyres can be used during the race weekend, not just in free practice.

“This is a completely new idea and it has to be evaluated and discussed.

"The FIA should come with wording to propose but we are open to evaluating that and we will continue our development tests."

He did warn, however: "Safety is a target that is always there. We cannot consider a tyre that is not safe for Formula 1."