Reverse grids would guarantee F1 action

The destiny of the 2014 Formula 1 world championship will be decided over the run of eight races in 14 weekends that begins with Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix.

If a few of those events live up to the drama of Hungary and the battle for the drivers' championship remains as gripping has it been so far, 2014 will rightly be remembered as a classic season.

But the margin between dramatic, memorable races and the mundane is a razor-thin one. Look at the Hungarian GP, which took Formula 1 into its August break on a high.

Suppose Marcus Ericsson didn't pile his Caterham head-on into the Turn 4 barriers on lap eight. Had that not happened, the safety car would not have been deployed early on, leaving Nico Rosberg, Valtteri Bottas, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso hung out to dry.

Ericsson's crash bunched the field in Hungary and triggered the start of a fascinating race © LAT

There would have been no spectacular victory for Daniel Ricciardo after passing Lewis Hamilton and Alonso, there would have been no team orders controversy at Mercedes and there would probably have been no second safety car caused by Sergio Perez pirouetting into the pitwall.

We also wouldn't have seen Alonso driving incredibly on shot rubber in a glorious attempt at hanging on to win, or witnessed the hilarious shortcomings of McLaren's weather forecasting skills.

What we would have seen was Rosberg winning at a canter, as he was already nine seconds up the road. There would have been some interest around the timing of the first stops, with those going to slicks too early or too late losing ground, but nothing like the spectacle that we were treated to.

But beyond that, and the interest of seeing how far up the order Hamilton could climb, there would have been little to get your teeth into. It would have been another normal race.

In short, it was good fortune that the race was so spectacular. And that was because things were mixed up. Cars were out of position and we saw some extreme contrasts between pitstop strategies, with slower cars trying to hang on ahead of quicker ones, not to mention a few big names on very new rubber late on. All of this is a formula for an eventful grand prix.

With F1 busily tearing itself apart in a bout of destructive naval-gazing, this raises the question of how to ensure that races like this are the norm. And, indeed, whether engineering F1 to be more like this every race is the right path to go down.

As it happens, the 2014 season has been gripping, but the amount of moaning from the more vocal parts of the sport's fanbase suggests that it isn't good enough. If this is a representative view (and proper research is needed to ensure that it's not just the more noisy feedback that is listened to), how can F1 ensure that its on-track product meets those expectations?

The example of the Hungarian GP is a valuable lesson in how difficult it is to 'spice up the show'. It's simply a question of control, or the lack thereof.

Nelson Piquet Jr infamously crashed on purpose © XPB

While the technical regulations played a small part, notably the more torquey engines making the rear of the car more difficult to control in slippery conditions and the DRS, which increased the probability of on-track passes, the overwhelming majority of the factors were uncontrollable.

Weather? That can't be controlled (no, sprinklers are not and never were a credible idea). Drivers cannot be made to crash at opportune moments (except in exceptional, and infamous, circumstances). You can't guarantee dramatic differences in strategy (and if you do, there is criticism about high-degradation rubber).

So what factors can you control? Ask the average senior engineer in F1, those who are often criticised for failing to offer up technical regulations that make F1 more dramatic, and many will argue that it's the sporting rules that have the greater power to influence the on-track product.

While conventional wisdom has it that a few quick fixes like wider tyres or a drastic cut in aerodynamics will somehow turn every race into the 1971 Italian GP, it's clear that technical regulations are not as influential as we like to believe. F1 teams, even the bad ones, are damn good and will soon hone in on the best way to do things, once again ensuring that tiny differentiators are all that matter.

And when it comes to sporting regulations, the one thing that it is possible to engineer is a mixed-up track position. As has been argued before, the tradition of lining cars up in practice pace order is not an inherent characteristic of racing. The first quarter-of-a-century of grand prix racing did pretty well without that, after all.

Mixing up the grid won't always produce momentous races like the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix © LAT

Having cars out of position does not automatically guarantee a dramatic race - it won't make every single grand prix like Suzuka 2005 - but it will increase the probability of a good race. That is what makes it an idea worthy of considering.

There are various forms that a reverse grid could take. AUTOSPORT's Jonathan Noble, proposed a karting-style one that also has merit. Overtaking is, in its simplest form, a function of a faster car being behind a slower one, so if you increase the probability of this happening, so the chances of a dramatic race rise.

There are various forms a scrambled grid can take. Some will argue that it's a gimmick, which is one of those irritating pejorative terms that people need to think about a little more before throwing around.

The DRS is decried as a gimmick, and there is a legitimate basis for this on the grounds that the car behind is given an artificial advantage. What you can't argue about is the fact that it is a functional solution to the problem that everyone moaned about incessantly five years ago.

But a scrambled grid, created fairly and equitably, is not that kind of gimmick. Hold a lottery to decide the grid order, and that is a bad thing. This is what makes the double points season finale so wrong, as it unfairly weights the championship outcome towards just one of 19 races in the hope of creating a title showdown.

But find a way to reverse the grid properly and it will not be. It would be a huge cultural shift in F1, although it is a format that is used in some other forms of motorsport even though it has never really caught on in long-circuit racing.

It would be a big step, but it would be fascinating to see F1 seriously analysing whether this is an idea that has legs. It might be that the downsides of the idea, particularly the fact that the reaction from most would probably be to object and the possible loss of the spectacle of qualifying, outweigh the potential benefits. That is why it should be evaluated thoroughly.

Unfortunately, this would require research, understanding and the application of the kind of rigour that grand prix racing appears incapable of. What would actually happen is the creation of another talking shop where people toss around ideas, make unfounded assertions and make decisions without due diligence.

Radical changes would need to be carefully examined before their introduction © LAT

This is all part of a bigger debate about what grand prix racing should be. It's a debate that needs to be founded upon understanding rather than vague ideas and a nostalgia-tinged attempt to recapture the past.

Grand Prix racing has always been a forward-thinking sport. But that requires a clarity of thinking that appears to be in short supply at the moment.

It's time for F1 to understand fully what are the many things about it that are right, and what things are wrong. If - and this is a big if - that racing itself is the main problem, as some relentlessly assert, then reverse grids is an idea worth of consideration. This is not simply about asking people what they want, but really getting to the bottom of what works.

And the conclusions should be deeper than simply throwing around terms like "gimmick" and "artificial" which are placeholders for arguments that need to be articulated and examined more deeply.

Even if the introduction of reverse grids is a valid idea - which it is because they would deliver far more of the wheel-to-wheel racing everyone wants to see - and it is decided as the right way to go, which is a more difficult question, it will be no panacea.

Instead, it would need to be part of a wider strategy from a sport that is in danger of losing all sense of what it is trying to be.

A sport that is, literally, about going around in circles must not allow itself to do so metaphorically if it wants to thrive.