“When you first grab them,” Hayden said, “steel brakes are quite aggressive. The first bit of stopping is very strong—sometimes even stronger than carbon. But as you really get into deep, hard braking, that’s where carbon makes the difference.”

Lever “release” is another advantage. “Carbon brakes have more feel,” Hayden said. “You can modulate them more easily. At the end of the braking zone, steel is a bit more on/off.”

On the flipside, carbon-carbon won’t work without heat. In 1992, at the urging of engineer Erv Kanemoto, former 500cc World Champion Wayne Gardner ran a carbon/steel “cocktail.” A similar combination was tried in mixed weather conditions in MotoGP as recently as two years ago.

“Carbon really needs warm-up,” Hayden said, “depending on the track, conditions, and size of the discs. Normally you can drag the brakes to the end of pit road and get 90 percent of the heat in the discs.”

“The only place I really noticed a difference [between carbon and steel] is turn two at Jerez," (they were testing the steel/carbon brakes at Jerez)Hayden said. "In that corner, if you brake a quarter of a bike length too deep you literally can’t stop. When you need that last bit of braking power, carbon definitely stops quicker.”

Opposite scenario? “If you put steel brakes on MotoGP bikes, like we use in the rain, the stopping distances would be longer,” he said. “That could make for better racing.”

Red Bull boss Christian Horner says top teams are unlikely to accept any future change to Formula 1's payment structure that will result in them losing income.

F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone revealed last week that he is considering a revamp of the prize money system that could mean leading teams like Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes lose bonus payments they get for their historic contribution to and previous success in grand prix racing.

But Horner says that the best way for smaller teams to get more income is through F1's commercial chiefs securing more revenue for all teams – rather than taking it away from the big outfits.

“It’s like with all these things, you’ve got to be comfortable with the amount of money you are receiving,” he explained.

“If the money goes up for everybody that’s less of an issue than if the money has to go down to some of the teams.

“So if more revenue can be brought into the sport, it’s for the promoter to decide how the revenue is divided.

"But of course all the teams will have an issue if their revenues drop.”

Mick Schumacher not on radar says Marko

Dr Helmut Marko says he is not currently interested in signing up Mick Schumacher to Red Bull's famous driver development programme.

At the same age of 17, Red Bull fast-tracked the meteoric F1 career of Max Verstappen.

But when asked about Schumacher, the young Formula 4-racing son of F1 legend Michael Schumacher, Marko said: "Mick Schumacher is not on our radar.

"There is nothing more to say," the Austrian, who is the architect of the Red Bull driver programme, added.

For his part, Mick seems comfortable about racing the road to F1 in meticulous style, having already decided to spend a second year in F4 rather than leap into F3 in 2016.

"For the moment, my goal is to become a good and complete race driver," said the German.

"Because of this, it's important to me to have a solid base and to become confident in all areas racing will be confronting me with," Schumacher added.