Yes, is it practical: No. You'd probably have to calculate (and know) all interconnect path delays for all solutions you want to try. You'd need to take into account not just the available gates but also their individual delays. I'd stick with emulation for now, though there are async 8051 processors which are extremely interesting due to their low power usage.[1]

[1]: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4519392/