The old guard is unconvinced.
"It's not motor racing. It's calculation," slammed Swiss ex-driver and German-language commentator Marc Surer.
Team Lotus' technical boss Mike Gascoyne thinks the FIA is right to flag possible changes to the rear wing rules this year.
"I don't think we're going to get it right straight away," he predicted, admitting his own concerns about the loss of racing's purity. "Some of the greatest drives were by people like Gilles Villeneuve, holding off the rest of the field. Are you going to say 'Well, that's never going to happen any more'?"
Another fear is that chasing drivers will call off a genuine overtaking attempt on another part of the circuit in order to simply press the button in the designated 600-metre zone.
But F1's most successful driver, Michael Schumacher, backs the concept.
"It's a good innovation. We know that in F1 we have a problem with cars following other ones. If there is no dramatic change in the ratio between aerodynamic and mechanical grip, you need something else. This might help," he told Germany's Auto Motor und Sport.
And Michael Schumacher said he doubts pressing the button will make overtaking easy. "There is no button for just driving past someone. It could be that we just close the gap and get in the slipstream to start a fight. Or it could be that it's not quite enough."
Ferrari's Costa agrees: "Our calculations say that it (600m) is on the edge."