Could F1 thrill every single time?

The negative noise being generated about the Formula 1 spectacle almost got to the point of drowning out the cars last weekend.

So if there was ever a time for the racing to answer back and get its voice heard, it was now.

Bahrain 2014 wasn't just one of the best grands prix of recent times, it also served as evidence that the new turbo regulations not only can work, they do work.

Flat-out racing, spectacular wheel-to-wheel action, thrills and spills, plus a victory decided in the final laps rather than at the first corner provided all the proof you needed that F1 has a bright future with its new set of rules.

However, just as it was wrong of people to think that F1 was in crisis after the first two races failed to deliver quite as much drama as we would have hoped, so too we can't think right now that every race is going to be like Bahrain.

Malaysia offered little of Bahrain's entertainment © XPB

The reality is that, just as in any season, we're going to have some great races, as we did last weekend, and equally there may be some processions, as we had in Malaysia.

It's the ebb and flow of the sport - and ultimately the better days are always sweeter because of the bad ones.

Yet perhaps the time has come for taking a bit more of a radical approach and pondering ways that can make races exciting all the time.

It was on this very topic one evening last weekend that I spent time debating with some colleagues about just what - if anything - could be done to really spice things up if we could write the rules afresh.

Any solution had to retain the purity of competition, could not involve pure luck and had to produce one thing in spades - excitement.

After much toing and froing, the conclusion we came to was perfectly simple - because one truth of motorsport is that if you want a boring race, you start the fastest car at the front, with slower cars behind it, and let them tour around until the chequered flag comes out.

Excitement is caused when a faster car's trying to get past a slower one ahead. That's why some of the best grands prix have come about when the fastest cars have been out of position down the grid - not left all alone on pole. Think Japan 2005.

Suzuka 2005 famously showed how a mixed-up grid could thrill © XPB

The ultimate way to ensure that the maximum number of faster cars are at the back is to introduce reverse grids. But that would be as bad a gimmick as double points.

So the solution we came up with was a halfway house: reverse-grid qualifying. Rather than the current three qualifying segments to set the fastest time as we have now, Saturday's one-hour session would be turned into a sudden-death competition race.

From a rolling start in reverse-championship positions, drivers would be unleashed for 22 laps of racing - with the man at the back being black-flagged each lap to decide the grid from back to front. The last man standing would take pole position.

The action would be spectacular. Teams and drivers would have to have cars optimised for overtaking rather than pure lap time, and there would be a much greater prospect of this system delivering some mixed-up grids for the grand prix itself.

On current form, no one is going to stop Mercedes storming away with race victories this year - but having Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg fighting their way through from the back of the grid on Saturdays and completing their task on Sundays would ensure there was never a dull weekend.

F1 has been very brave in adopting some fantastic new technology this year as a way of pushing on towards the future. Could the powers-that-be ever be bold enough to try out something as radical as reverse-grid qualifying?

Over to you, Bernie...