Bring Back Bernievision

Bernie Ecclestone - you either love him or loathe him. Or, like me, you find time to do both...

He's a polarising figure who's come to amass around £2.2bn in wealth from F1 through very astute business and very smart politics.

As someone who basically started by running Brabham in the seventies, he's come a very long way indeed, seeming to absorb each important and money-making facet of the sport over the successive decades until he pretty much owns it all.

As F1 "supremo" (wouldn't that be a fantastic word to have on your business card) he tends to be on the side of the fans and the sport, (as opposed to Max Mosley, who clearly models himself on Alan Rickman's classic pantomime Sheriff of Nottingham from 'Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves'); although he does still have lapses...

Bernie didn't manage to prevent a completely preventable and unmitigated disaster at Indy last year, even tossing back smarmy answers at Martin Brundle (in his finest hour) on live TV, and looking like a pratt fiddling while something big and important burned.

Still, he has had some great ideas - like the outrageous 1978 Brabham BT46 'Fan Car'. And perhaps, most importantly, "Bernievision" - the name people gave to his phenomenal digital F1 channel you could get on Sky a few years ago.

It was a perfect match of sport and technology: I tend to take most things in my stride, but as an F1 fan and a telly addict I was blown way by its amazing capacity to deliver something approaching the ultimate at-home GP experience.

Bernievision gave you a multi-screen setup where you could pick main feed, onboard shots, pit lane coverage, leaders, midfield, looped repeated highlights, timing data, driver profiles, and all kinds of other geeky goodness.

Not only that but it was on for every single part of the event: Friday practice sessions, full Saturdays - practice and quali, even the Sunday warm-up and full race build-up. It was able to make everything so exciting (even when in reality it perhaps wasn't) and allowed you phenomenal levels of scrutiny - I spent most of 2002 watching Kimi Raikkonen's engines grenade themselves from millions of fascinating angles...

Once an idea ahead of its time (reflected in the original lack of take-up) it's now in danger of being lost, when it could be a crucial tool in distributing F1 to all the "markets" Bernie wants to get onboard.

F1 needs a dedicated media division focused on bringing back that service and getting it on every digital network on earth. Never has the sport needed more people to get excited about it, and what a great legacy it would be for Bernie to do just that...