BMW team boss Mario Theissen has admitted that even his squad might not be ready to use its Kinetic Energy Recovery System in Melbourne.
The German manufacturer is thought to be ahead of the game with KERS, and pushed hard to ensure the system was retained during the radical cost-cutting last month - to the dismay of some other teams.
But Theissen says that at present he cannot guarantee that BMW's KERS will be functioning at the season-opener.
"We are not ready yet," he said at today's F1.09 launch.
"I am sure we will be ready at some point; I don't know if we will be ready for Melbourne.
"But that is the character of innovation, you take some risks and you don't know when they will pay off.
"I'm pretty sure it will pay off at some point in the season and that it might become the crucial factor."
Theissen also defended BMW's support for KERS.
"We have had numerous discussions on KERS over the course of the last year – it’s not new," he said.
"Some teams have always been opposed to it, some have been in favour of it, we have probably been the strongest supporter.
"In the past month we have discussed KERS within FOTA.
"We had a clear agreement how to proceed with regulations and how to come to an unanimous decision.
"This discussion was quite open and we came to the conclusion that based on our request, mainly our request, not only our request, we could stick to KERS.
"Our position in the discussions has been that KERS is important to Formula 1 as it will put F1 into the world of a true technology pioneer.
"Obviously we have said KERS is important for BMW because we have spent a lot of effort on it.
"But the real thing is when we discussed it a few months ago most of the money had been spent already – money on development.
"It would be the worst thing to spend money on something you don’t use.
"And even if you delayed the introduction, no development project becomes cheaper by delaying its introduction.
"In effect we would have developed KERS, all teams would have developed it for another year before making use of it and that in our view just doesn’t make sense."