F1 urged to learn from Canada show

After tyre dramas in Montreal helped deliver one of the most exciting races of recent seasons - with 60 overtaking moves during the event - leading figures within the sport believe F1 should take into consideration exactly what the factors were that made it so good when it comes to framing new regulations.

Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner reckons that Canada showed perhaps too much focus had been spent worrying about aerodynamics having the biggest effect on the racing.

"There was this myth of aerodynamics being the root of all evil - but in Canada you could quite clear see tyres have a much bigger influence on car being able to race each other," he told AUTOSPORT.

"In fact, you could say now it has a bigger influence than perhaps aero does."

Lotus technical chief Mike Gascoyne thinks one of the key lessons to come out of Canada was that it important tyre regulations are framed in such a way to make one of the available compounds very difficult to work with.

"If you were going to write the tyre rules for how you wanted races to be, they would be like Canada," Gascoyne told AUTOSPORT. "You had changing strategies, overtaking and lots of excitement.

"It was exactly what F1 needs, and it's proved that the argument for one tyre being very marginable is very strong."

He added: "Just look at the different way people used the tyres. Some used the super soft at the start and we ran it for 18 laps at the end - which was fine. [Vitaly] Petrov stopped five laps later than us, he came tearing up to us and we thought we were in trouble - but by the time he was up to us his tyres had dropped off and we were able to defend. That was good racing."

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh thinks Canada - allied to a number of similarly exciting races this season - has proved that there is not that much wrong with the current F1 regulations despite the poor season-opener in Bahrain.

"Lots of people want to write negative things, but we've now had seven fantastic races," said Whitmarsh, referring to Bahrain being the only boring event so far this year.

"In Turkey, after 40 laps, you had four cars split by three seconds - and there was a lot of pressure there. Then we had Canada.

"In F1 you are not supposed to follow closely and you cannot overtake - but Canada was a great race. We've been very fortunate and have had some classic motor racing this year."