Would a tyre war solve F1's overtaking crisis?

We said the Monaco Grand Prix was a one-off race in which little happened because the style of track means you shouldn't expect overtaking there.

But in Canada we had another procession, even after the FIA created three artificial overtaking zones with the DRS. There were few passes in the heat of battle.

It's time for the powers that be to take notice of this. I'm an enthusiast and have been involved in Formula 1 in various ways for many years, but this is the worst it's been.

Ways to change things need to be looked at - could the return of tyre competition be a way to achieve this?

There are several problems that need to be tackled. As well as the lack of overtaking, the gap between the big three teams and the rest, led by Nico Hulkenberg's works Renault in Montreal, was way too big. He was 1m11.5s behind sixth-placed Kimi Raikkonen, so that's basically one second per lap - 71 seconds across a 70-lap race.

The lack of on-track action is a shame because the battle at the front is actually incredibly tight. Sebastian Vettel now leads the world championship by just one point from Lewis Hamilton, three teams have shared the seven race wins and the gaps between them are small. So it should be a great season.

F1 might just get left behind by some of these new formulas that recognise that the show is everything

There are many things that could and should be done. Obviously, the aerodynamic regulations need to focus on forcing the teams to build cars that can race each other. But that's going to do nothing to close up the competition between those that have and those that don't. For that we need to somehow mix up the grid.

I keep talking about reversed grids and I stick by my convictions. It is the only way that we will get better and closer racing across the field. Yes, it changes the face of F1 but perhaps it's time for a change. If not, F1 might just get left behind by some of these new formulas that recognise that the show is everything.

When you see a driver such as Charles Leclerc in his seventh grand prix, in a Sauber, fighting with and holding off Fernando Alonso in his 300th grand prix, in a McLaren, it makes the racing just that bit better. We need more of that and with reversed grids we would definitely see a lot more.

Then there's the tyres. There's so much talk about these, and while it's true that they are always important because that's the only way the car is attached to the track, their influence has become overwhelming. Performance swings are often down to who gets the tyres working.

There seems to be a bit of momentum to change to larger-diameter rims with reduced tyre sidewall heights. This would be a good change and bring F1 up to date with where road cars are heading, but the question also needs to be asked whether we should have more than one tyre supplier?

We have had this in the past, but when there was a real tyre war in the 1990s and 2000s it was also at the time of refuelling. So there were two things affecting the end result and it would be very difficult to separate them. We need a formula that encourages overtaking on the track and not in the pits.

Pirelli is doing what it's been asked to do. It supplies a tyre to all the teams and that allows the teams and drivers to fight each other. But it means that it's down to the teams to design their cars to suit the tyres, which is something that you'd have to say these past two seasons Mercedes hasn't really succeeded in achieving.

If we also had Michelin and perhaps Bridgestone or Goodyear joining the battle, things would be very different. Each tyre maker could then refine its product to suit the chassis it was supplying, but the bigger works teams would always carry more clout, leaving the smaller squads using whatever they were given.

Michelin, with its vast experience in F1 in the past and its knowledge in the design of low-profile tyres, would be a strong proposition.

At Jaguar we worked very closely with Michelin ahead of it coming into F1 in 2001. Michelin was and still is a very professional outfit and during its test and development programme it had a very deep understanding of how the tyres would respond to different constructions and compounds.

But I wouldn't underestimate Pirelli. Its current brief is to supply what is now a one-make tyre formula. Pirelli needs to be let loose to show how competitive a tyre it can actually build, so it would be great to see Pirelli matched up against another tyre manufacturer like Michelin.

Unfortunately, Pirelli will not be keen on doing this given the commercial basis of its F1 entry and fears of rising costs. But that would be a business decision rather than a lack of knowhow.

As for the others that have been involved in F1 in the past, is the time right for Bridgestone to make a comeback? It came into F1 in 1997 and pushed Goodyear, which was the only tyre supplier from 1992-96, out.

Bridgestone raised its game when Michelin entered the fray, winning four championships with Ferrari during the first part of that tyre war before leaving F1 after 2010 because its commercial reason for being in grand prix racing - to significantly raise the profile of the company - had been achieved.

That was a bit of a damp squib, so perhaps it's time for Bridgestone to come back and regain its racing credibility?

With F1 having a new American owner in Liberty Media, perhaps it would be possible to drag Goodyear back into the field. It did a great job for many years, and it would be interesting to see how it performed against the others.

The big question would be which teams would end up with which tyre supplier? Normally, the best end up with the best, and the manufacturers have the whip hand because of their ability to use certain tyres on their road cars.

There is no easy way to prevent this, so in reality it's probably better to just have one tyre supplier. I'm not saying that has to be Pirelli, but with one supplier at least it's the same for everyone and it's down to your driver and team to get the best out of it.

There are also a couple of negatives with more tyre suppliers. It would increase costs dramatically and it would require lots more testing, so I suppose that would all be a bit of a dead end when everyone is trying to come up with ways of reducing spending in F1.

At Jordan in 2002 and '03, we experienced the downsides of being a small team in a tyre war era with the same supplier as the champion squad. We got whatever specification of tyre Ferrari wanted, and we even had to make do with tyres made using different materials just because the material used in the Ferrari tyres was limited or too expensive.

The Bridgestone was still a good tyre, but as a small team in this situation you always feel beaten before you actually start. The danger is that a tyre war would just lead to a bigger gap between the haves and the have nots.

But one simple thing that does need to change to make it easier to get the best out of the tyres is to allow teams more freedom in setting the weight distribution of the car. Currently, the regulations state that "the weight applied on the front and rear wheels must not be less than 333kg and 393kg respectively at all times during the qualifying practice session".

Weight distribution regulations were introduced when Pirelli came in back in 2011 to tackle concerns that a team could luck in to the right weight distribution to get the best out of the tyres. That rule has remained in place since.

Tyre compound differences fade into the grey mist of saving fuel, saving engines and minimising tyre degradation

F1 shouldn't make weight distribution settings completely open, but it should increase the flexibility and range available. That way, teams can focus on how best to get the tyres working for qualifying and over a race distance. Give them the tools to tailor the car to the tyres.

There are now three different tyre compounds at each race, so could it be stipulated that all three compounds need to be used? This would mean two pitstops at least, but never mind that - the important thing is there would probably be cars out there on different grip level compounds at different times. Therefore, more overtaking.

While I'm on the compound bandwagon, it's time that was all simplified. There's not enough difference between compounds. Pirelli talks about there being over a second between the hypersoft and the ultrasoft, but that's rubbish.

We never saw anything like that in Canada, and during a race the difference fades into the grey mist of saving fuel, saving engines and minimising tyre degradation. Let's just have soft, medium and hard at every circuit and simplify it for the viewer.

So some of the things that you can argue would be improved by having a tyre war could actually be changed by tweaks to the regulations. This would prevent rising costs, and the smaller teams struggling on rubber that's optimised for very different cars.

A tyre war is a nice idea, but there are very significant negatives that could actually work against the improvements to F1 that you'd hope for. And when there's still so much that F1 could do to improve things without such a change, it's more important that Liberty Media should focus on those.