The FIA have acknowledged that there is a loophole in the engine regulations allowing them to use
their winter upgrade 'tokens' at any time during the year as they seemingly forgot to add a homologation date into the regulations. The regulations seem to assume that everyone will be ready to re-freeze engines ready for the first race in Australia however it was raised at the latest technical working group that no explicit date had been set.
Every engine manufacturer under the new regulations gets a set amount of 'tokens' to spend on upgrading their power units. This loophole doesn't give anyone any more tokens than they had before, it just doesn't make them rush the developments as they can be added at any point during the year. Potentially this will aid those still playing catch up as they could spend more time developing the units before racing them.
This however doesn't apply to Honda who as a new manufacturer have to go through the sane freeze process as everyone else did last year!
It just doesn't look good that the world motorsport governing body still can't write watertight regulations does it?