I'm not sure who said it, possibly Christian Horner, but it went something along the lines of "there's no point trying to fix the cars for more overtaking it's the circuits themselves that need to be looked at." Actually thinking about it, it may have been Patrick Head, a man who's opinion is one to be respected and listened to on a great many things. He went on to say that if you ask all the drivers about overtaking opportunities at each track they all say the same thing, "I think I can overtake here, here and here." all exactly the same. So making more of those opportunities or the characteristics of those parts of the tracks is probably the only way to increase overtaking.
As for what the Sepang CEO is saying, I think it's a very naive point of view. Malaysia is a, relatively, new country to F1 and in Europe the spectator may be considered more sophisticated in that the technical aspects of the sport are as much a part of the attraction as the racing itself. I, and I doubt I am alone, am interested in all aspects of the sport from the engineering, through the politics and back-stage shenanigans to the purity of Sunday and the race. I do hope his point of view is not indicative of the Malaysian fans as a whole as I suspect it isn't, those kind of people listen to marketing men more than actual fans anyway.
Personally I'm tired of seeing the cars nerfed and designers stifled with shoe-box regulations. Safety aside, the cars have become so, and it's a very relative so, easy to drive compared to cars of days gone by and the DNA of a champion is now missing that certain something that led Hemingway to include motor racing as one of only three true sports. No-one wants to see drivers, crew, marshals or spectators die but that safety fence being so far away from the edge of the cliff nowadays has diminished the completeness of today's champions and by further nerfing the cars for "the show", they do the sport a disservice in my most humble opinion.
You can't wind back the clock and un-invent aerodynamics so there will always be that "dirty air" effect. It's producing the circuits and the right kind of straight/corner interaction that's conducive to overtaking that needs to be looked at. Tilke has in the majority of cases got it wrong, they need to change their track man. Don't get me wrong, he has actually created some of the best hot lapping circuits ever. They are an immense challenge to driver and car individually and are, in most cases, an absolute pleasure to individually drive (from a sim point of view at least) but they are fundamentally flawed froma racing point of view. A greater proportion of the really great racing over the last couple of decades has been at the traditional circuits where mistakes are punished not Tilkedromes with corners that have a get out of jail free card on the outside.
Having said all that I would be more than happy if they could strike the right balance between safety, show, heritage and passion but I'm not convinced they ever will. As funny as it might sound but my ideal has already been envisioned although it was just a silly kids film and we'll never see real racing like that.