How Formula 1 could make reversed grids work

Bob Dylan was an advocate for change. So he wouldn't get very far as a motorsport official. For a sport built on speed, it's ironic how glacial progress can be in racing. A good thing Dylan chased inspiration for The Times They Are A-Changin' elsewhere, then.

Some people make motorsport's life difficult by being stuck in their ways. In Formula 1, this is best exemplified by its format. As the world championship has evolved - different technology, different venues, different points systems, different qualifying sessions - two things have held firm. There is a qualifying session, and there is a race that lasts for two hours.

'It's always been that way', so that's why it's kept that way. Well, that's a pretty weak argument given how much F1 has changed in 67 years.

F1 has always been a blend of sport and business, but the ratio is shifting ever more into the latter. The ever-increasing professionalism since the first world championship in 1950 combined with the technical evolution of grand prix racing has meant its entertainment value has weakened.

Homogenised cars make it seem like innovation is dead sometimes, but technically these are the most-advanced grand prix cars ever. Unfortunately the advances made in the field of aerodynamics do not make for good racing.

Why would the leading teams devote time and money to creating a car that can follow in traffic and race more freely when the system isn't designed for that? There's no point in Mercedes or Red Bull pursuing anything other than building an aerodynamic behemoth when they know that if their car is quickest they will start at the front and, more often than not, not actually have to do any racing...

Yes, F1's always put the quickest car out in front. But that tradition stems from a time when reliability was worse and it was fundamentally easier to overtake. The 'random' elements that modern grand prix racing relies upon weren't so random when things like qualifying came into being.

That's what makes it nonsense for tradition to be used as an argument against reversed grids. The so-called purity of grand prix racing has long since been eroded - the arguments that propped up qualifying as a way of setting a grid are arguments for a distant relative of modern F1.

All the more perplexing, then, that so many people are not open to the single, simple change that would have the most immediate and positive effect on a lack of entertainment in races.

It would not require a huge change for F1 to implement reversed grids, and the fundamentals of the race weekend could actually remain. The easiest way to go about it is to have the cars start each race in reverse-championship order, with the reverse of the previous year's drivers' championship setting the grid for the opening round (and newcomers starting last). This stops drivers sandbagging in a qualifying session to give themselves a good grid slot.

It might be a little skewed in the opening races, but would eventually settle out. And in the opening races of the season it would throw up a few different grids. The Mercedes would be at the back for the first race, but further forward next time out if they make little progress and don't score that well in the opening round.

Conversely Esteban Ocon, starting on pole because of his results last season with Manor but now in a Force India, might enjoy the rub of the green in the opener, but reversing the championship standings would mean he starts the next race towards the back.

In addition to fluctuating grids in the early races, there would be a need for cars to be able to run in dirty air, so design emphasis, on some level, would migrate towards that. And it would offer a significant test of the best drivers' racecraft - Sebastian Vettel, for example, could finally silence the critics who still believe he isn't good in wheel-to-wheel combat.

The lesser-heralded challenges of a grand prix still remain - strategy will still be crucial, as will the work in the pits by the mechanics - but the race as a whole will be visibly more difficult for the drivers.

It must be accepted that not every reversed-grid race would be like the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix (often held up as the ultimate example of how reversed grids could work in F1). The Mercedes and Red Bulls probably aren't going to carve their way through and win every single race - if they do, each race would be more entertaining and if they don't, then it has injected variation into the results.

With its current three-day format, though, F1 relies on qualifying for a Saturday showpiece (in addition to support races, depending on the venue). Whatever F1 does, it needs to retain something that showcases man and machine on the limit.

After all, despite all the complaints, speed's hardly the issue with the modern turbo-hybrid era - the Mercedes W07 is the fastest-ever car at some circuits now. It's the massive disparity between the ultimate pace and what we see in the races. At their peak, these cars are still incredible.

Removing qualifying altogether is not an option, even if it's not being used to set the grid. If we're sacrificing starting from pole as the reward for having the fastest package, there needs to be payment in kind. Otherwise grands prix would descend into two days of teams carrying out set-up work in preparation for Sunday's race, and that just devalues attending events further.

Instead, why not give qualifying added impetus by awarding points? By offering reversed grids you're not just handing the fastest package a bigger hatful of points to take home from each weekend. That doesn't work. For example, in the 2015/16 Formula E season Sebastien Buemi and Lucas di Grassi went into the final round level on points - but Buemi's tally included 14 bonus points for poles/fastest laps, compared to none for di Grassi.

In that instance the bonus points arguably unfairly skewed the championship picture - one driver racked up more points in the races (the races are why we're here, right?) while another relied on bonus points for being really fast. That's obviously slightly tongue-in-cheek, but hopefully you get the point.

Separating qualifying from the race means still rewarding the team that builds the fastest car and the driver that does the best job with it - you just don't then hand them an extra advantage for the race itself. It becomes an extra element to the championship picture, but it's key that it does not carry the same weight as the race itself.

How you would score qualifying is a tricky one. There needs to be a reason to get as many cars on track being driven as fast as possible. With that in mind, award points to the top 10 qualifiers in the following manner: 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1-1-1.

That offers just enough scope for the quickest midfield runner to nick in and bag a bonus point or two. If the minnows don't want to take part because they see there being no chance of making it into the point-scoring Q3, it's no real loss. Does anyone watch qualifying for the car that's three seconds off the pace? No.

A 30-minute free-for-all in pursuit of the fastest time, with three sets of the softest-compound tyre available for each driver, would give spectators the chance to witness the quickest cars on the limit. So qualifying can have a part to play in a reversed-grid world.

Reversing the grids would, of course, probably devalue individual grand prix victories. Occasionally a driver that many may deem 'undeserving' may well hold out for a win, although it's difficult to envisage a scenario whereby someone could win in a Manor or a Sauber in a genuinely 'easy' way. Still, the risk of every now and then adding a slightly random driver to the list of grand prix winners would be a small price to pay for enhancing the product overall.

You could view all this as too artificial if you want, but really, what does it matter? Some of the best grands prix of the last decade have been 'artificial' in some way.

When Pastor Maldonado won the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix he did so after making the most of Williams having a particularly good weekend. He didn't beat Lewis Hamilton in a straight fight - Hamilton started from the back after getting excluded from qualifying.

Vettel's maiden grand prix victory with Toro Rosso is viewed as a true underdog triumph - it's hardly held against him that it was in the wet and against Heikki Kovalainen's underwhelming chase in the McLaren.

Then there's Max Verstappen's first win on his Red Bull debut, which came about because of the Mercedes wiping each other out, and team-mate Daniel Ricciardo suffering from a bad strategy. Surely nobody discredits that?

Those grand prix weekends are examples of a series of fortunate events that allowed a driver to make the most of the opportunity and upset the status quo. Yes, they were bizarre circumstances that came about naturally, and reversing the grids is not the same because the shifting of the odds is being manufactured.

But it's getting more and more rare that all the stars align to allow for something different to happen. And it's foolish for something that is still part-sport (even if it doesn't always feel like it) to throw itself at the mercy of fortune to put on an interesting show for those who are paying a lot of money to watch trackside or on television at home.

There's another format change that could work, too - but it's not reversed-grid related, and would require a significantly bigger overhaul of F1's DNA. It's a format that's prevalent in karting, among other forms of racing: heats and a final.

Saturday could host two 30-minute sprints, with the grids determined at random. If it's a grid of 22, then each driver's pair of grid positions should add up to 23 - ie a first and a 22nd, a second and a 21st, etc. You score points all the way through the field - perhaps on a 25-23-22-21-etc sliding scale (giving a little two-point boost for winning). The points scored over the two heats would set the grid for Sunday's grand prix (the final, in this analogy).

That would give trackside fans and TV viewers reason to tune in on Saturday, and could throw up jumbled grids from time to time. It would reward speed and racecraft, while also encouraging a rulebook that allows cars to follow in traffic and race wheel-to-wheel.

It is, admittedly, a big step, one that makes reversed grids a much tamer change by comparison. But the bottom line is these are varying solutions to the same problem. F1's evolved massively and morphed into something that is very, very rarely random - so why not stack the deck?

Maybe it's because the internet has given rise to the dissenting voice, but it's hard to shake the feeling that F1 is not enjoying its strongest days. Yes, it's a global series and there's an awful lot of money in it - but it's mainly the owners and ring-fenced teams like Ferrari who swallow it up. Heritage venues and smaller teams are struggling to remain part of F1's inner sanctum.

Eventually, something has to give. Times aren't just changing; they have changed. If F1, to you, is worth saving, accept the fact it needs to adapt. Otherwise all it will be doing is treading water - and if F1 doesn't start swimming, it'll sink like a stone.