Bernie Ecclestone seems almost like a fictional character. No one like him actually exists, right? A guy who essentially took over a whole race series, made millions (billions?) of dollars in the process, runs that race series like an autocrat and at age 80 shows no signs of slowing down or going away.

But there he is, King of Formula One.

Like other autocrats (some of them in the news, of late), Ecclestone is prone to nutty ideas and doesn’t have the luxury of sober people around him brave enough to say, “uh, maybe you should ask around, give it a bit more time before you talk about it.”

One of his wackier proposals is to … “make it rain” during F1 races.

I wrote about this in a sports column for The National, and it was all I could do to keep from referring, in print, to Bernie as the “Rain Man.” Both he and I are old enough to remember the movie well.

You hear this for the first time, and it sounds like the sort of hare-brained idea fans might have after a round or three at the pub. “Hey, you know, races always seem to get interesting when it rains? Why not water-down the track with hoses or something?”

That was essentially what Ecclestone proposed. Check the opening paragraphs of the column, and you’ll see. He’s telling the official F1 website that they could turn on the water and douse a track maybe 10 laps from the finish. With two minutes of warning.

Put up sprinklers, was how Mark Webber put it.

What is really interesting is that this “make it rain” idea came in response to a question about adding excitement to F1 events. Which, yes, too often are parades of non-passing. (That the F1 king concedes he has some ideas for making F1 racing more interesting … well, it wasn’t just you who thinks the races are more than a little dull.)

But that sort of gimmick, guys out there with garden hoses … I don’t think so.

But in the interests of entertainment, I went along with the flow and generated some of my own ideas for making F1 more entertaining. Including traffic signals, two-way traffic, intersections and fans allowed to bring their private vehicles onto the track. Rain would be just part of the package as F1 races morphed into destruction derbies.

F1 is what it is — the most technologically advanced form of motor racing, the most expensive and the most glamorous. Hoping for multiple lead changes … well, no, it’s not going to happen. Or rarely will. So just sell what you’ve got — fast cars, high-end brand names, the whole jet-set vibe surrounding the sport. Seems to be working well enough.

Anyway, the “rain button” seems on hold, for now. But Bernie is thinking about it, which is always dangerous.