Formula 1 legend Alain Prost has said that more tyre freedom will spice up the sport's battles.

With the new regulations making the cars faster and harder to drive in 2017, some still worry that overtaking and exciting tyre strategies will in fact be even less likely this year.

Yet quadruple world champion Prost, an advisor to Renault, thinks that tweaks to the tyre rules would help with both.

"Let the drivers put together their own tyre choices from the five different compounds and assemble 13 sets according to their wishes," he said.

Currently, Pirelli takes three consecutive compounds to each race and tightly controls how the teams can select them.

Prost told Germany's Auto Motor und Sport: "I would even let them use different tyre types in one set - so a soft for the left and a hard for the right, or vice versa."

The Frenchman said that would likely result in vastly different race strategies, performance variation and potential mistakes, and bring out the driving 'personality' of the drivers.

"I would also remove the rule that you have to use two different tyre compounds," said Prost. "If you want to use a hard tyre without making a pitstop, please do.

"Or perhaps another would be faster with two stops and only using the softest tyres."

He said that his proposal would mean races are often won due to "the feel of the drivers. And it could provoke surprises."

The 2017 championship continues this weekend with the Chinese Grand Prix.