Formula 1 is in trouble. It’s a sport that involves cutting edge engineering, reflexes like a cat with a red bull IV, and hurtling round a track fast enough to turn your eyeballs inside out – yet somehow the faceless suits at the FIA have managed to turn it into a hybrid of formation-driving procession and tepid courtroom drama. Clearly something needs to be done before we’re all watching Indycar, god help us. There have been many suggestions for fixes – some of them sensible, some less so, but all useful in their own way. Unfortunately the proponents of these solutions don’t have my insider connections, technical nous or blackmail collateral about Flavio Briatore and have so far been ignored.

I’m just awaiting the inevitable call from Jead Todt saying that he’s given up and is sending a chopper to convey me to Paris where I shall be enthroned as F1 tactical consultant and nitpicker general, and to make sure I’m prepared to hit the ground running (as we say in motorsport senior management circles) I’ve already prepared an outline of the major changes I’m going to implement with immediate effect:

1. Power ups
They worked for Mario. They worked (well, kinda) for Dick Dastardly. Power-ups would introduce a much needed element of unpredictable fun into the proceedings while still keeping it all about driver ability – except that ability would have to expand to include knowing how to shake off a heat-seeking missile and where on the lap is tactically best to detonate an EMP.

I’m thinking something along the lines pioneered by the mighty Jason Statham in Death Race (recent remake not 70s weirdo original) – driving over a certain spot on the track would switch on a system that the driver can deploy when needed. Maybe not miniguns and flamethrowers, after all F1 drivers are quite expensive to replace, but I think we can concoct a suitable array of oil slicks, tyre-shredding lasers, smoke clouds etc. That thing from mariokart that makes everyone else go tiny for a while is probably out of the question until at least the 2015 season.

2. Reverse grids
Actually, this would be good. The BTCC‘s grids are based on the results of the previous race – finish first, and you start the next race from 8th place. There’s also some crazy lottery system used for the third race which is interesting but a bit complicated. Look it up on Wikipedia. Anyway – the practical upshot is that you don’t have a grid with fast cars at the front and slow ones at the back, and there’s lots more of the top drivers having to slice their way through the field.

3. Trackside sprinklers
This has been suggested by many people, and with good reason. So far in the 2010 season the amount of excitement in a race has been directly proportional to the amount of rain that falls during it. This is because it introduces a random element that can’t be predicted, modelled, analysed and accounted for by the engineers before the race – but what to do at all those races held in places that are not Britain and therefore aren’t guaranteed at least some rain? Randomly activated sprayers would make every track treacherously slippery in places and we would get to see the enormously satisfying sight of Alonso sailing backwards into the tyre wall much more often.

4. Exploding advertising signs
Say you get nudged off the track – normal practice is to just try and get back onto the racing line. How about instead you keep heading over the grass, shoot up a ramp, and sail gracefully through a huge advertising hoarding which explodes in a massive fireball behind you while you neatly land, rejoin the race and pick up a 5-point style bonus?

5. Bernie Ecclestone to be fitted with a small device that electrocutes his left testicle whenever he gives a smug, evasive or supercilious answer to any journalist’s questions.

6. Team job lottery
On Sunday morning every single employee of each team draws a job description at random, and that’s the role they have to perform for the race. Engineers would have to run hospitality. Pit girls would be tasked with making split-second decisions about fuel mixture settings. The tea lady would have to change a tyre in under four seconds and all the while the drivers would watch powerlessly as an HR manager and the receptionist charge round the track.

7. Ban Nicole Scherzinger from going with 100 miles of the racetrack.