MONACO - World motorsport chief Max Mosley on Wednesday called for Formula One engineers to innovate as they try to ride the shockwaves caused by the global credit crunch which has seen Honda quit the business.

Having earlier in the week said that governing body the FIA had been aware for some time that Formula One was spending money beyond its means Mosley indicated that "engineers must get innovating again" or else risk seeing the business decay.

Mosley said: "what isn't working out in Formula One today wasn't working out before the economic problems came along. Essentially, these are the ever-stricter rules which limit the work of engineers to more and more restricted areas."

"Success in Formula One today consists of optimising each little bit of the chassis, which is ever more costly and completely absurd," Mosley said in addressing the opening day of the Motor Sport Business Forum.

By way of example Mosley pointed out: "A Formula One team spends 1,000 dollars for a special wheel nut imported from California and uses 1,000 per season, so that produces an overall bill of a million dollars a year."

He added that the constant search for new, lighter materials "has created a mentality in Formula One which forces the engineers to refine as opposed to innovate and that is slowly destroying Formula One.

"It's all very expensive and that's not really an engineer's mission." With cost-cutting and also standard engines on the agenda looking forward to 2010 Mosley welcomed the pending introduction of the innovative Kinetic Energy Recovery System, which will become obligatory from next season, as a means of forcing the innovative pace.

Mosley earlier this week confirmed the FIA were in exclusive negotiations with engine suppliers Cosworth, along with Xtrac and Ricardo (XR), for the use of transmissions.

If teams decide not to go with the standardised engine next season, they can either build an engine themselves, but identical to the mooted Cosworth version after being supplied with all the necessary technical information or continue to use their existing engine - but with the current ban on development and requirement for engine parity still in place.