What was wrong with the old system, where the top 20 'seeds' went into a hat for start number? If this was done for every race, it would even out the advantages/disadvantages for each rider.
Personally, I would have hated to be number one, knowing everyone was going to scream along trying to get me in sight, thus being ahead!
Of course it would mean that the programme compilers would have the immense difficulty of checking that they had put the right number against the right competitor for each race......