SILVERSTONE, England -- It's a fact of racing life: Rules makers keep trying to slow cars down while engineers keep finding ways to make the cars go faster.

Finding a balance between those two conflicting forces has been a constant and tricky skirmish since the earliest days of racing. And it's been an especially difficult equilibrium to find in the high tech and politically charged world of Formula One.

The question of whether it's time again to tame some of the F1 cars' horsepower is on the minds of many at this weekend's British Grand Prix. The answer to that question isn't as easy as one might think.

While FIA president Max Mosley and F1's czar and commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone have plenty of influence and power, they cannot, as happens in NASCAR, mandate overnight rule changes to alter the performance of the cars.

The exception and loophole in F1 is that technical rule changes can be made instantly on the grounds of safety. Between the 1993 and 1994 seasons the FIA used "safety" as the reason why it banned active suspension and electronic driver aids.

In general, any short-term technical rule change has to be approved by all of the teams. And getting the teams to agree on anything except what day it is can be a difficult thing to do.

That's not to say that rule changes aren't made. Over the years the rules makers have steadily chipped away at various aspects of the cars to keep speeds at a reasonable level. In the last 30 years most of these speed reductions have been made to the chassis, tires and especially the aerodynamics.

The engine side of things, however, has been virtually untouched since turbos were banned at the end of the 1988 season. To entice major automotive manufacturers into F1, to have them invest the huge sums of money needed to create F1 engines, and to ensure that they stayed in F1, the FIA has offered long-term stability on the engine rules. Since 1989 the only major engine rule changes were a reduction of capacity from 3.5 liters to 3.0 liters in 1995 and restrictions and reinstatements of some of the electronic driver aids.

When the current formula began in 1995 the engines produced about 750 horsepower. Today the best V10s put out 900 horsepower at 19,000 rpm. As the engine rules are set until 2007, it is predicted that horsepower figures will reach 950 to 1,000 by then.

Having 1,000 horses is a lot of power. But just as a matter of reference, at the peak of the turbo years and with special fuel the 1.5-liter engines were putting out 1,000 horsepower in the races and about 1,400 in qualifying.

But with all the gains made in every aspect of the car, speeds needed to be reduced. Had this not happened, F1 cars these days would have turbocharged engines, fully automatic gearboxes, huge slick tires, active suspension, massive wings that moved for optimum downforce, ground effects, exotic fuels, all sorts of electronics and more. Even the best drivers would only be able to exploit a small part of all that potential, but speeds would still be dizzyingly and dangerously fast.

Just about all the gizmos listed above have been banned, so how will the rules makers slow the cars now?

Formula One's Technical Working Group met recently to discuss that dilemma and the general agreement was that a horsepower reduction is needed. Methods such as air restrictors, fuel economy and rev limiters were not popular, so the group passed a proposal to the engine manufacturers that they consider a reduction in capacity. The idea is to reduce capacity to about 2.5 liters.

Ferrari's technical director Ross Brawn favors going to a V8 2.5-liter engine over a V10 2.5-liter to reduce power because it would mean that you basically chop off two cylinders from a V10 block and the combustion, the piston, the valves, etc., would stay the same.

Brawn suggested the idea of lopping off two cylinders during a news conference on the Friday before the British Grand Prix. Williams BMW technical director Patrick Head then quipped: "You couldn't do it tomorrow, could you?"

The problem with Brawn's idea is that some engine manufactures are committed to the V10 concept.

"Some of the engine suppliers have marketing policies which revolve around the V10," Brawn said, "so it's difficult to get agreement, because for us to do a V10 small capacity would be a pretty expensive exercise. It would be a higher revving engine than we have now. So it seems difficult to get a solution."

The chassis and aerodynamic (and even tire) engineers are frustrated with always having their areas hit by rule changes to slow the cars down and would like to see horsepower cuts instead.

"The measures that are brought in to slow the cars down are always aimed at the chassis," said Renault's technical director Mike Gascoyne, "and that should be matched by a sensible change in the engine regulations, but it's very difficult to get full agreement on that. I think it is the right time to do something along those lines."

McLaren's managing director Martin Whitmarsh says getting anyone to agree to anything is going to be difficult.

"All of the engineers on the chassis side and on the engine side are striving to find performance," he said, "so it's always difficult to accept change which is designed to control performance. There have been a lot of initiatives over the last ten years to control the performance via aerodynamics and other factors on the car. I think we've got to keep a balance and the engine power progressively increases, and that's why the technical working group felt it was sensible now to find ways in which we could control the power."

McLaren's engine partner Mercedes has been opposed to reducing engine capacity but is now willing to talk about it.

BMW is willing to discuss the subject as well, but BMW's motorsport director Dr. Mario Theissen wants the matter to be studied carefully.

"There are two issues: horsepower and costs," Theissen said. "I am more concerned about costs. We should not change the regulations every year, but do it just once and address both issues. We also need to look at other issues, like increasing overtaking."

Theissen does not agree with Brawn that you can make a V10 into a V8 and says that development costs of creating a V8 would be considerable especially as the V10 program would have to run in parallel for several years.

Horsepower will be somewhat tempered next year because of the new rule that requires the engine to last for the entire weekend.

The question remains: Is it time to tame some of F1's horsepower?

The answer seems to be yes, but getting everybody to agree on a solution is when the work begins.

Dan Knutson covers Formula One for ESPN and ESPN.com.