For more than a decade, Bernie Collins accrued a wealth of experience at the highest level of Formula One. In 2014 she was performance engineer to 2009 world champion Jenson Button at McLaren before eventually becoming Aston Martin’s head of race strategy.
Her most glorious moment in F1 was the chaotic Sakhir Grand Prix in 2020 when Sergio Pérez went from last on the first lap to take a memorable maiden victory for both himself and Racing Point. Yet when Collins moved from the pit wall to in front of the camera two years ago, becoming an on-screen analyst for Sky Sports F1, the transition was an uneasy one.
“For a long time, I felt like I was a bit of a fraud, not doing enough work on the pit wall. I felt a bit like I wasn’t contributing as much to the sport. Before, the decisions I made directly affected the outcome of the race,” she says.
Her work at the heart of F1 is serving her well. In the past two seasons, she has become a reassuring presence, ready and eager to distil the complexity of myriad race strategies into plain language for viewers at home. Despite a lowering of the competitive stakes, there was some discomfort in the early stages of her broadcasting career.
“When you’re on the pit wall you’re very confident in your ability, you are very ‘in your moment’. You’ve done a lot of work on the data and you’ve got the support network around you. To step away from that and then be on screen, much more public facing was a bit more daunting.
“When I did my first race [for Sky Sports] in Jeddah in 2023, I probably didn’t really think about the number of people that were watching at home. I felt a bit initially like I wasn’t contributing as much to the sport,” she says.
The switch to broadcasting was a leap and there has been plenty of support from her Sky colleagues. The likes of Martin Brundle and David Croft – with hundreds if not thousands of commentary stints behind them – have been supportive.
“You can learn something from them every day that you are out with them. It can be something really minor like how they are holding a microphone or how they phrase a question to someone. I am sure I annoy a lot of people asking a lot of questions all the time, but I am really keen to learn.”
Collins, however, does not shy away from robust debates within the Sky team. Although her colleagues have decades of experience in the sport, she has the most recent and relevant direct knowledge of how things work in modern F1.
“I think they’ve learnt a lot about what happens within a race team and what happens on the pit wall. We have some quite strong discussions about what we think is going to happen. We’ve all got different opinions. I hope they have learnt something from me.
“There are times when a discussion will come up because of what is happening in practice and I’ll say ‘no, this is why teams do a certain thing’. I think it has been really good learning on both sides.”
Collins’ route into F1 was not mapped out in the traditional way, indeed she got into motorsport “the wrong way round”. Whilst races were on at home in the background, it was not until ...
