Dear Bernie,

I watched your interview with ITV at the weekend with the same eager sense of anticipation as any other lifelong fan of the sport.

I watched and I listened, but somehow I felt I'd heard it all before. No, not in the sense of you publicly admitting that you'd got it wrong, but in some other, somehow darker, way, and then it hit me.

Your attempt to convince us that things are going to change reminded me of a wife-beater following another vicious beating. "It will never happen again," he'll promise. "I swear I've learned my lesson." And all the time he'll be crying, but the tears are for him and him alone.

I like you Bernie, I really do, but I wasn't convinced by yesterday's performance, what I saw was a man trying to patch things up, trying to placate bruised and battered race fans and sponsors, a man desperate to make amends before the door finally slammed shut on 'the marriage'.

What was it that prompted this urge to 'testify', was it the falling TV figures, the lack of ticket sales for Indy or perhaps the GPWC's timely announcement that it was still working towards its own series in 2008?

Whatever it was, something caused you to change your tune, and how!

A couple of weeks ago you were telling us that racing is exciting but that we're watching it in the wrong way! Somehow this smacked of the same arrogance as Max, who had previously told us that strategy was all-important in F1 and that for the most part we'd imagined all that racing and overtaking during the sport's golden era.

To return to the wife beating analogy, some men can get away with it. They treat their women like garbage because they know she has nowhere to run, no place to hide. The beatings get harder and more frequent and as time goes on the man doesn't even bother going through the pretence of apologising, far less crying.

Yet thankfully in these enlightened times, some women are saying 'enough! I'm getting out of here!' And the man can only watch silently as his partner walks out the door never to return.

The problem is Bernie, you're surrounded by lackeys, cowardly lackeys to boot. You say jump, they say 'how high Mr E?' To a man, they are terrified of you and the power you wield.

Now you're old enough and wise enough to know that fear isn't respect, not by a long way. The media, the teams, the circuit owners, the drivers and the accountants have all been telling you: 'Yes Bernie', 'It's Great Bernie', 'Everything's hunky dory Bernie'. They had their heads so far up your arse all we could see was their little legs dangling out the back.

Suddenly though they can see that the writing's on the wall, the natives are getting restless and even your card-carrying media pals need to be seen to be writing something negative about the sport.. but not too negative eh!

As I said before, I like you and I respect you, however I don't fear you. That's why, along with the rest of the team here at pitpass I have constantly criticised the direction the sport's been taking. I do this not out of a desire to be different, nor to be seen as a trouble maker. I do it as someone who has stood out in all weathers watching my heroes, who has witnessed some of the true motor sport legends in action, as someone who still pays to attend Grand Prix and still gets a buzz when I see, let alone hear and smell one of those magnificent machines.