Your times would be similar, I think. Car setups would change. This shows how easy is to adapt cars to tracks and how hard is the inverse proposition.
Many circuits would become more difficult, specially the odd ones. Monaco, of course, has been polished over the years. The chicane at The Pool, for example, is the end result of many post-crash analysis, so, essentially, you would have the same evolving redesign. When you run the Monaco tunnel in reverse... well, the new "tunnel exit" would be very hard, not taking in account that you would take Loewe going upwards. You would expect accidents to happen there, so the circuit would change over time.
Of course, as already pointed out, barriers and the such would become mortal traps, safety zones would have to be redesigned and pit entrance and exit wouldn't work as intended (slow down layout in the entrance, acceleration lane on the exit).
I want to point out that in NASCAR, many people take a "Polish victory lap" (in reverse), following its "invention" by Alan Kulwicki. That'll be the day, if someone does the same in F1... because regulations (sigh) forbid it:
"
all cars must proceed on the circuit directly to the post race parc fermé without stopping, without overtaking (unless clearly necessary), without receiving any object whatsoever and without any assistance (except that of the marshals if necessary)."
Some days I wonder how fvcking boring have to be Formula One managers. They
regulate victory laps, people!
I wouldn't party with those guys if they were the only human beings alive in this world. They probably fall asleep while making love.
I find that as incoherent as regulating an orgasm, in the name of Tazio Nuvolari's ghost! If I won a Formula One race, I would take the penalty (whichever it is), run in reverse, kiss the pitbabes, whip Mosley (if present) and drink the whole champagne bottle in a big gulp. Then I would burp in front of the cameras, I guess.
Now, returning to my story, when Kulwicki died in an airplane accident, hours later his truck driver took the car hauler around the track in reverse, in his honour. After that, some drivers took the custom of honoring his underdog spirit with this kind of racing. Now,
what used to be a defiant transgression is a custom. Same thing happened with champagne celebrations in the podium: what used to be a way to taint journalists, now is a
procedure. Sigh. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Alan Kulwicki would have liked your idea. I loved the guy: he entered the most expensive series in the US with no sponsors, a racecar and a borrowed pickup truck. He won the Rookie of The Year award that way. A graduated engineer, he drove, owned the team, kept the books and made his own strategy, while rejecting two offers to drive for the super strong Johnson team. That's my kind of driver, preferred over the Schumachers, Hamiltons and Alonsos of this world. Life in reverse, as it should be lived
Finally, I have to remark that
I find your proposition very, very, very, very, very dangerous. As you already know, the water (and the cars) spin in a preferred direction, depending on the hemisphere.
So, as is well known by anybody in this forum, trying to run NASCAR races in reverse, with the cars turning right, would make them go in the opposite direction of the Coriolis force, subverting the planet Earth axis, impinging on the crust nucleus and
creating a quantum anomaly vortex that would swallow the racetrack and the cars, spectators, the Statue of Liberty and the Twin Towers... wait a minute, not the Twin Towers, they aren't there anymore, but you can picture the image... have you seen 2012? The same thing, with airplanes flying under Metro cars and people screaming and running in circles with their arms held above their heads.
For example, in Colombia, almost at the Equator, you can only run drag races, in a straight line because of the Coriolis force. It's a tad boring, but you get used to it.
That's the main reason why nobody race in reverse. Beware of the vortex.
