Ever the purist, Fernando Alonso feels that the hybrid era has seen the sport lose its soul.

At a time Mohammed ben Sulayem is seeking the return of V8s to the grid, Alonso's career began in the time of the screaming V10, which was followed by the V8 and then into the hybrid era.

A critic of this year's regulations from the outset, the Spaniard feels that the ongoing changes don't go far enough, indeed he believes hybrid compromises the very DNA of the sport.

"The DNA of these power units will always be the same," he told reporters in Montreal. "And it will always reward going slow in the corners. I don't think it will change things.

The thing is that the world went, or thought to go into, the direction of electrification, that was thought to be the future," he continued. "But that doesn't apply to racing. Racing is a different animal.

"Now, we go a little bit back to the 60-40, and then in the future to less and less. Unfortunately, we had this period from 2014 with the turbo era, and now even more, that we lost nearly one decade or even more of pure racing."

Using the Montreal track as an example, without using Lando Norris' yo-yoing reference, he questioned the authenticity of much of the overtaking we are seeing, and which F1 is selling as proof of the regulations' success.

"On the straights, when you have more battery than the others, it will be very easy," he said. "It will not be overtaking, it's just an avoiding action," he added.

"When you have more battery than the others, the other ones clip, so they reduce 500 horsepower," he explained. "Then you have 500 horsepower more than the others, you take an avoiding action, and then you overtake a car."

The Spaniard, who took time out of F1 to contest the Indy 500 and WEC, was asked about Max Verstappen's exploits in GT3.

On the straights, when you have more battery than the others, it will be very easy. And it will not be overtaking, it's just an avoiding action," he added.

"I don't think that they can call that pure racing," he said. "It's just a different series. But it's good that they discovered different sports and different categories, and different ways of enjoying motorsport. Formula 1 is just 1% of the whole motorsport environment.

"And yeah, I think people enjoy it," he continued. "I remember when I did the Indy 500 first test, there were like 2 million on YouTube just watching me doing laps around the oval, alone. And then they followed it that season.

"There were like two Europeans driving in the IndyCar, now there are 80% Europeans driving in IndyCar. So, hopefully more people will go to the Nürburgring, or to the Le Mans in the future, or whatever.

"If top drivers in Formula 1 go there, they are just opening the eyes for fans into a new series. Formula 1 is the pinnacle and lovely, but also the other series are just as magic as Formula 1 in a sense."