How to decide racing's champion of champions

Next year, if we had our way at least, there would be the launch of a new motorsport contest: the Champion of Champions.

Its purpose is to pit world's best drivers against each other across motorsport's main disciplines - road racing, oval racing and rallying.

There is something similar already in the form of the Race of Champions. But while that pits drivers from different series against each other in head-to-head battles in various machinery, it is a one-off and is more of an exhibition event.

What motorsport needs is a proper championship, that fosters intense competition, with a greater emphasis on wheel-to-wheel battles, rather than head-to-head time-trials.

Motorsport is enjoying a purple patch right now. Fernando Alonso and McLaren's Indianapolis 500 escapades captured the imagination. The Le Mans 24 Hours was laced with drama as all six LMP1 cars encountered major problems during the race. And there is a buzz around Formula 1 amid hope the new owner will take the series to the next level.

So now is the perfect time to capitalise on that interest with the announcement of new series. Here's how what we have in mind would work...

The respective reigning champions in Formula 1, IndyCar, the World Rally Championship, the World Endurance Championship, NASCAR and the World Touring Car Championship will be invited to compete.

The field will be completed with four drivers via invitation. The rules dictate invitees must have won a world championship, finished runner-up or triumphed at least five times in one of the above series. Should any of the respective world champions be unable to compete, the invitational criteria will be applied there too.

They will contest four races, one of which will require the TCR International Series and Macau Grand Prix to end their row and allow drivers to compete in TCR-spec cars around the streets of Macau.

A second will take place at Pocono, a track that features three unique turns, with banking of various degrees, in IndyCar machinery. Drivers will be required to follow Alonso and McLaren's example and put together an entry.

The third will be a rally, ideally Portugal. It's by no means the hardest on the calendar, but represents a 'typical' event with the roads around Porto more twisty and technical than Finland or Poland but not as abrasive as Mexico or Sardinia. As is the case with the IndyCar round, drivers and their sponsors will need to arrange their own entry.

The fourth and final round will be a non-championship Formula 1 race, the type of event F1 sporting chief Ross Brawn is keen to bring back.

This would take place at the Algarve circuit in Portugal, where circuit owners and the government are keen to bring F1 back to the country.

All 10 F1 teams will be required to run a third car, with the leader of the Champion of Champions driving the car that is last in the championship, the second-place driver taking the ninth-placed car and so on.

For each round, 15 points will be given to the winner, 10 for second and eight for third. The remaining points - 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - will be handed out to the other seven drivers as per the classification.

In the TCR, IndyCar and F1 rounds, an additional five points will be awarded to the driver who takes pole, while the driver who secures the fastest lap in the race will also earn a five-point bonus. And the three drivers who lead the most laps will earn five, three and two points respectively.

For the rally round, 10 bonus points will be given to the driver with the most stage wins, with seven given to the driver with the second highest tally and four to the driver with the third best.

Prize money will be given for each round, distributed on a sliding scale with the winner earning £1million and 10th-place collecting £10,000.

The champion will receive a £1million bonus that will rise to £3million if they agree to put the money towards an entry to compete in the following year's Indianapolis 500 or Le Mans 24 Hours.

In an already congested calendar, why does motorsport need another championship you might ask?

Well an event of this nature, done right, would give motorsport a global boost. Motorsport needs to ditch its tribal tendencies and become more joined up if it is serious about surviving in an age where other sports are reinventing themselves.

Take boxing, for example. Legend Floyd Mayweather - unbeaten in 49 bouts - has agreed to come out of retirement to fight Conor McGregor, who became the UFC's first dual-division champion last November.

The fight, due to take place in Las Vegas in August, will be one of the richest in boxing history, with both men set to earn as much as $100m (£78.9m) apiece.

Though the quality of the fight is uncertain, given McGregor lacks boxing experience, the level of interest and the buzz around is off the scale. That's the kind of buzz motorsport can benefit from.

Respective motorsport series could also use the event as a testing ground, like football's governing body Fifa started doing in 2005 with the Confederations Cup.

The eight-team tournament, which features the holders of the regional championships plus the World Cup holder and the host nation, now takes place in the country that hosts the World Cup the following year, to act as a rehearsal for the larger tournament. This year, it's in Russia.

Fifa gets another event and Russia gets to test out its facilities and infrastructure. It's win-win.

If a non-championship F1 race was part of the four-race series, Brawn could use the event to run different ideas that are on the table to be introduced to F1 in the future.

If Portugal is chosen, it would also be a dress rehearsal for the Algarve circuit to assess if the track is the right fit for F1, whether the venue is capable of hosting such an event and help convince the government it is worth backing financially. And having F1, considered to be the pinnacle of motorsport, as part of the four-round series would be a coup.

There are obviously the practicalities of making such an event happen to consider. Drivers will need to find and fund an entry. There is also the issue of contracts, which are pretty complex these days. Drivers have deals to race full-time in F1 - so Nico Hulkenberg being released by Force India to race for Porsche to race at Le Mans in 2015 was the exception not the rule - and their commitment must be to the team and to their sponsors.

It will be tricky to align sponsor interests of all the series involved and the driver. But it is not impossible. Alonso, McLaren and Andretti showed what can be done with the Andretti Autosport-run Dallara-Honda Indy 500 entry.

It was almost entirely bedecked in McLaren's traditional orange and covered with stickers representing the team's partners.

McLaren executive director Zak Brown said it did not charge its sponsors any extra for their involvement as the team felt it helped offset the exposure lost through McLaren-Honda's on-track struggles in F1.

It is believed the programme cost McLaren £3million. The Indy attempt proved how much interest and exposure can be generated when something like this is executed correctly. Competing could help teams' existing sponsorship portfolios while attracting one-off sponsors to help fund the programme and boosting their respective images. What rally team wouldn't want to run Alonso for a one-off event?

Alonso's presence at Indy was a roaring success and he has said he is keen on returning for another shot at victory, while Hulkenberg's success in the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2015 proves that drivers switching disciplines generates interest.

Motorsport is too predictable. For the most part, there is a team or at best a small handful of teams that can challenge for victory regularly and sustain a title challenge. The majority of the field essentially make up the numbers, with some in a position to take advantage if an opportunity comes up.

The Champion of Champions series would be a curveball and hopefully that will mean fans will respond to it. Imagine the best drivers in the world lining up in evenly-matched TCR machinery, unfamiliar to most of them, and having the same amount of time to prepare ahead of the race?

There was a buzz when Valentino Rossi got behind the wheel of a 2008-spec F1 Ferrari on GP2 tyres at Barcelona and got within 0.1s of Raikkonen's 2008 pole time. And Robert Kubica's test of a 2012 Lotus earlier this month, in what was his first F1 mileage since his grand prix career was interrupted by severe arm injuries sustained in a rally crash in February '11, was a big talking point. The live internet stream of Alonso's first IndyCar test attracted more than two million views. It's clear interest in unusual motorsport endeavours exists.

Mario Andretti, Jim Clark and Sir Jackie Stewart used to criss-cross the Atlantic to compete Stateside alongside their F1 programmes. It was easier, then, as there were far fewer races on the calendar. With 20 F1 races this year, plus pre-season and in-season tests, there are few weekends without clashes. The Indy 500 has long clashed with Monaco.

And drivers don't need to do more than one series these days. Stewart and Andretti were picking up races in other series to earn more money. Now, F1 drivers get paid quite handsomely.

There are also potential health issues through overworking. Stewart came down with a case of mononucleosis, a debilitating disease that sucks away your energy, in 1971 as a result of a busy workload. The three-time world champion's schedule involved more than 80 transatlantic flights when racing in F1 and Can-Am as well as engaging in significant promotional work.

Our proposed new championship would require F1 bosses and the FIA to work together with other motorsport series, as they have done ahead of unveiling the 2018 calendar, to make this feasible.

Drivers are keen to try other forms of motorsport - if schedules allow and opportunities present themselves. The key will be attracting big enough names or personalities that fans who are not hardcore fans of individual series can identify with.

Motorsport has attempted such championships in the past. The International Race of Champions ran for more than 30 years.

Drivers would race stock cars, identically-prepared and set-up by the same team of mechanics.

It was a small field, not more than 12 drivers, and involved participants being invited from a range of championships.

Criteria for competing wasn't strict, but it tried to attract champions - with racing legend Andretti one of the series' champions.

In an age where every event - sporting or non-sporting - has a battle on its hands to attract people's attention, motorsport needs to up its game.

Something like our Champion of Champions, planned well and properly backed, would be a step in the right direction to help it do just that.