So the spectre of reducing speeds in F1 looms again and will no doubt be discussed at length by the powers that be. I may be wrong, but the question of rev limiting never seems to be mentioned. I would have thought that this was an easy to instigate and easy to police solution. Engine and transmission reliability would benefit as would costs, I would imagine development costs must rise exponentially with engine revs. The argument that you can't stifle development at the pinacle of motorsport does not hold as it is already stifled by the current rules anyway.
In that case research would certainly change focus from mad fluid mechanics flow models and extreme mechanic modelling of elastic deformations to minimizing internal power losses, via heat dissipation and friction (they already look at it, but would become crucial to maximize power in the rev limit). It could even possibly allow some gains of efficiency in everyday engines.
I've suggested in the past controlling gas emissions. Is not a radical ecological position, but rather forcing engineers to study things that the everyday engines could in the future benefit from and, in the same time, to restrain performance increase.
As far as saving money in research, if F1 companies have an euro to spend, they will spend it.
if the revs where to be limited, i suspect they would only investigate how to maximise torque and getting peak power at lower revs. this would subsequently lead to higher cornering acceleration and via the hihger torque, the gear ratio could be higher, thus the speed loss would be small if not noexistant. a better way to increase safety would be some radical changes in the car restrictions, which could also even out the differences between teams as the cars aerodynamics would have to be completely altered. another nice possibilty would be having a v8 2.4 litre.
So the spectre of reducing speeds in F1 looms again and will no doubt be discussed at length by the powers that be. I may be wrong, but the question of rev limiting never seems to be mentioned. I would have thought that this was an easy to instigate and easy to police solution. Engine and transmission reliability would benefit as would costs, I would imagine development costs must rise exponentially with engine revs. The argument that you can't stifle development at the pinacle of motorsport does not hold as it is already stifled by the current rules anyway.