Voice of Reason: Bernadette “Bernie” Collins

Bernadette “Bernie” Collins: I got a mechanical engineering degree at Queen’s University in Belfast in Northern Ireland and after that I joined McLaren in 2009 as part of a graduate scheme. I ended up doing suspension design and then gearboxes, but I really wanted to get trackside, to at least try it and see if I enjoyed it. At the time, McLaren produced a GT3 sports car for customer racing, and some younger members of staff were given an opportunity to work on that project. I worked with a few teams, one of which was United Autosport, owned by Zak Brown. Then in 2013, I was given the opportunity to cover two races as performance engineer for Tom Stallard, who’s now Oscar Piastri’s race engineer. And in 2014, I started full-time.

It’s a very different environment and a big step up. It can also be a harsh environment at times, especially in the first year. At that time, McLaren was quite a political place. It was tough, both physically and mentally. At the end of 2014, even though I thought I’d done enough to stay, I was told I wouldn’t be traveling in 2015. I really wanted to stay trackside, so when a job came upat Force India that was half performance engineering, half strategy, I took it— mostly because I wanted the performance engineering bit, not the strategy bit, which I really had no experience of!

It was a massive shift, and it did take mealongtimetogetusedtoit.In performance engineering, there’s an exact brake balance; it’s the right one or not. With strategy, there’s a lot more estimation—into the tire model or the pit window, a whole range of things. The responsibility is a shift, too. You’re the last person to make the call. One of the downsides of strategy is that everyone knows what you should have done— one lap after you’ve done it. That was something I had to get used to.

I relished the influence I could haveon the team’s race. I had a massive influence on both cars and the total team’s finishing position. I loved that aspect of my job. I always felt like Sunday was my day. The difficulty with being that last person is that decisions are often very difficult to make, or 50/50 at the time. And if it goes wrong—and there were definitely races where we made poor decisions—getting off the pit wall and walking back through a garage full of people who’ve worked really hard to build that car, you always carry that burden of responsibility.

When it goes right, there’s nothing better. Especially as a midfield team, which we were a lot of the time.

The win was fantastic. Checo was leaving the team at the end of the season, so it felt like the end of an era. He qualified pretty well, but he crashed at Turn 4. And from Turn 4 to pit entry, we had 40 seconds to decide if we needed to stop the car. The teams were checking front wings, tires, engine temperatures; Checo was giving his opinion; and we had this decision to make. Very rarely will you do a pit stop if you don’t need to. But we were dead last and we’d caused a Safety Car, so I said, “OK, we’re going to stop and fit the medium.” And Chris Cronin, his race engineer, turned to me and said,“Are you sure? This doesn’t sound right.” And I was like, “100 percent.” And Chris, because he knows me well, knew there was no point to ask again. That was it. The celebration when we won was crazy. I remember thinking later that some people in F1 never experience a podium, let alone a win.

I struggled with the COVID era. I found 2020 really tough, and while the next year was very different, we ended up with a lot of triple headers. At the end of the year we did one—from Mexico to Brazil and then Qatar—and in Doha I was just broken. Three different time zones, threeweeks away from home. Plus, the strategy work starts the week before the first race and ends the week after the third race, so you’ve got four weeks in which you’re working every day, and your only downtime are long-haul flights. I was just so tired. So eventually I gave it up.

I didn’t look for anything else initially, but as I was leaving—my last race was Hungary 2022—F1 TV asked if I would do a series explaining strategy. I did that and it turned into some podcast stuff for Sky. I’d look at some data, draw some graphs and send them across, and they were like, “We don’t actually have anyone doing this sort of stuff for us.” It just sort of grew from there.

At the start, I think there was real concern that if I just went in and said: “This is going to be a one-stop and Verstappen is going to walk it,” then people might just tune out. So there’s an element of storytelling you have to buy into. But yeah, that is the role I’ve naturally fallen into. Even in our meetings before the race, there’ll be a lot of speculation, and I’m probably more the one saying “Well, actually, the numbers say this.”