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Bernie Collins

F1 Engineer working within Sky Sports F1 and F1TV broadcasts

With over a decade’s experience at the forefront of Formula 1, Bernie Collins is a hugely accomplished strategy engineer, most recently employed as Head of Race Strategy for the Aston Martin Formula 1 team. She says communication is key. You need to relay the correct information in the most efficient way, so you need to have full trust in your wider team. It was Bernie’s responsibility to problem-solve in real time and execute successful race strategies in a hugely stressful and pressurised environment. Bernie is now an F1 Strategy Analyst for Sky Sports.

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Bernie Collins's 2025 biography

Meet Bernie Collins

With over a decade’s experience at the forefront of Formula 1, Bernie Collins is an accomplished strategy engineer, most recently employed as Head of Race Strategy for the Aston Martin Formula 1 team. During her career she has held senior strategy and performance engineering roles, playing a central role in the teams she has worked for.

Bernie developed a passion for mechanics at a young age, having grown up constructing and dismantling farm machinery with her father at home in Northern Ireland.  She decided to study mechanical engineering at Queen’s University Belfast and joined the annual Formula Student programme, a renowned engineering competition organised by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

After graduating in 2009, Bernie secured a place on the McLaren Formula 1 racing team’s graduate trainee programme. She volunteered as an engineer at GP3 Series race weekends, gaining further experience before receiving an offer from the McLaren GT sports car racing team.  In 2012, Bernie was promoted to the role of performance engineer and went on to serve as race engineer for the United Autosports GT team in 2013.

Bernie’s big break came in late 2013 when she was offered a temporary role as McLaren’s primary performance engineer in Formula 1. Following this, she was offered the full-time position for the 2014 season, working closely with 2009 Formula 1 World Champion Jenson Button.
In 2015, Bernie started working with the Force India team as a Performance and Strategy Engineer, including supporting team driver Nico Hülkenberg. She helped the team to achieve a podium finish for Sergio Pérez at the 2015 Russian Grand Prix. The following season Force India scored more podiums and consistent, points-scoring results en route to finishing fourth in the 2016 Formula 1 World Championship for Constructors.

Bernie became the Head of Race Strategy for the Aston Martin F1 Team in August 2020. The role saw her leading race strategy, guiding the team and its drivers as they sought to maximise the championship points achieved at each Grand Prix. This included balancing information flow from the drivers, engineers and support team in mission control back at headquarters, as well as reacting to external, dynamic events during each race.

In 2023, Bernie joined the Sky Sports F1 broadcasting team, her race strategy expertise adding significant depth to the channel’s coverage. She also contributes to Formula 1’s official website and digital channels, providing detailed insights on race strategy and helping fans to understand the complexity of decisions made during Grands Prix.

Her first book ‘How to Win a Grand Prix’  was published in 2024, becoming an instant Sunday Times bestseller.  Selected as one of the Forbes ‘30 under 30’ young rising stars of manufacturing for the Make It in Great Britain campaign, Bernie has also been named in The Manufacturer’s Top 100 UK Role Models list.

Bernie Collins's 2025 talks & topics

Leadership

The requirements of Formula One’s team leaders have changed significantly in recently years as teams have become larger, more complex, and the business model to which the sport operates has been transformed.  The leaders in F1 today are responsible for leading up to 1800 full time employees, creating a high-performance organisation which is fully aligned behind a strategy aimed at achieving a set of well defined, ambitious goals.

Competitive team leaders create a culture in which team personnel take responsibility and are happy to be held accountable for their performance.  Developing a high degree of psychological safety is key, requiring staff to speak up and speak out, with strong cross functional communications.  A relentless focus on continuous improvement is part of the F1 leaders mindset, and teams take a data-driven approach to measuring performance, highlighting issues and analysing developments. But whilst F1 is a technocentric sport, the successful leaders recognise that it is the people who make a difference. This is why so much effort is deployed to create an environment within which employees thrive, using their combined talents to problem solve and create highly innovative solutions in order to drive competitive advantage.

Teamwork/Collaboration

Competitive Formula One teams comprise 1800 staff, less than 10% of whom attend the race events, so teamwork requires complete alignment, shared purpose and close collaboration across the business.  The world championship includes 24 Grands Prix and these represent a series of non-negotiable deadlines which the entire organisation has to meet in terms of car development, hardware and software upgrades.  The ultimate, public example of high-performance teamwork comes in the form of the mandatory pit stops which have to be performed during a race – the record now stands at 1.8 seconds during which 22 staff carry out 36 tasks under extreme pressure. Alignment behind the team’s strategies and ambitious goals is vital, so too having the agility to flex the strategy in the face of constant changes in technology and the performance of competitors.

Data-driven performance & Innovation

More than any other sport, Formula One has embraced a data-driven business culture, particularly with its near obsession with marginal gains and continuous improvement. F1 teams use data to enable drivers, engineers and HQ staff to determine precisely how the car and driver is behaving, diagnose issues, resolve problems and speed up decision making. As information flows seamlessly around the globe, linking car, team and factory, tech security is essential and robust systems ensure protection from multiple threats.

The use of simulators has transformed driver training, enabling systems to be learned, tested and developed in a virtual environment prior to real-world deployment. And with the advent of additive manufacturing, machine learning, AI and GenAI across F1, the sport’s use of technology to innovate and transform all aspects of its operations is set to accelerate further.

Change & Transformation

Every industry is witnessing change and Formula One is no different. One of the challenges facing F1 teams is that the sector is ever-changing – so change management and leading teams through periods of transformation is an essential part of the job.  Change comes in many forms; technology, compliance, competition, customer demands, environmental and social issues.  F1 has had to reinvent its business model, embrace digitalisations, adapt to a changing media and social landscape. Above all, F1’s leadership teams have had to communicate, manage and implement transformation strategies, bringing their teams with them and ensuring that they make the most from embracing change.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion

Often perceived as a male-dominated sport, Formula One has invested heavily in gender diversity, also generating equal opportunities and inclusion for anyone from an under-represented group or background.  That journey began over 20 years ago with initiatives including F1 In Schools and Formula Student seeking to motivate children of school age as well as undergraduates from every background to consider a career in Formula One.

The Formula 1 Academy , launched in 2023, is developing female talent across the sport, whether as future F1 drivers, engineers or management,  The sport’s governing body, the FIA, operates the FIA Girls on Track programme, again providing young women and girls from around the world with opportunities across motorsport.  Individual Formula 1 team are also running important, game-changing initiatives, including Mercedes F1’s ‘Accelerate ‘25’ programme which aims to ensure that 25% of all new employees are selected from under-represented cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.

Seven times World Champion Lewis Hamilton, the first black driver to compete in Formula 1, has worked with Mercedes to creative mentorship and educational programmes for girls’ schools in the London borough of Tower Hamlets.  Hamilton’s Mission 44 organization has set about driving structural change with motorsport to ensure that anyone of colour can develop career opportunities in Formula 1. Meanwhile Race Pride charity has attracted widespread support from Formula 1 and its constituent teams, supporting the LGBTQIA+ community across the industry.

Safety & Risk Management

Safety is a first order priority in Formula One and the last 30 years have seen a profound change to the way in which the sport manages risk. Between 1950 and 1994, there were over 40 driver fatalities at races; there has been one since. This has been made possible by creating clear priorities as regards safety. Compliance is non-negotiable. Safety is not an area of competitive advantage. Safety systems, processes and technologies are shared so that F1 doesn’t have islands of excellence in oceans of mediocrity.

However, the risk averse teams never win in F1 – the teams which embrace and manage risk are more likely to try new things, innovate in ways both small and large, and ultimately drive competitive advantage. It’s the difference between participating and competing. The other factor is ‘fear of failure’. Teams that have a blame culture create such a degree of fear that everyone minimises their contribution and hides their mistakes, whereas those which thrive on creating a learning environment of continuous improvement have a degree of openness, honesty and transparency which promotes creativity and innovation, and taking risks, in a controlled way.