"We are ready to supply engines for 2014," he said. "Initial discussions have been had with some people, and I think by the end of September we would like to know where we are. But I don't think we have to have all the t's crossed and the i's dotted by then. It can go a little bit longer than that."

"Regularly we have done clean sheet of paper engines in 10 months," he said. "It is something we can do and have done time and again over the years. We would like a bit more than that because it is a complicated engine, but there is still a good amount of time left to do one. We are not particularly stressed at the moment about getting it done."

"I think what we have seen from Craig [Pollock, head of PURE] putting things on hold is that it demonstrates just how difficult the marketplace is," he said. "We have said time again that a solution needs to be commercially viable, and it would be remiss of us not to offer something that was commercially viable. The sport owes it to the fans and teams, and everybody involved in our industry, to make sure that they produce something that is sustainable and makes commercial sense.

"We will remain fairly private about our discussions until we have got to the point where we can reveal them to everybody, but commercial confidence is highly regarded in Formula 1. Everyone is trying to understand their options and there are still plenty of them. From our point of view we stand ready to provide a competitive engine whatever year that is required."