Czuch Czuckers: I also think that your proposal deserves to be tried. It is true that the doubling cube adds skill even to straight races, but it is not very difficult to learn the basic cubing strategy in races, so when both players know it there is again few room for errors and it is 99% luck all the same.
What you would really like to test in your variant is the type of positions where contact is almost broken, for instance both sides still hold their midpoint. Those positions would turn from quiet almost-race positions to extremely volatile.
The only thing I don't like about your proposal is that for playing over the board, it requires taking the exact pipcount into account while playing, which is tedious. Online, having the pipcount shown would be a must.