How to Win a Grand Prix: From Pitlane to Podium - The Inside Track 

By Bernie Collins Book Review By Ken Davies 

Written in alliance with redoubtable motor racing journalist and author Maurice Hamilton, Bernie Collins’ book takes the reader through the complexities of winning in modern Grand Prix racing, where success is the sum of many parts. To put things into perspective, the Tyrell team won the 1971 F1 driver’s title with their own chassis and less than twenty employees, including two drivers and the boss, who often drove the transporter to races when no one with the necessary license was available to drive!

In the 1980s F1 teams increased to almost 200 personnel which continued into the 1990s, except that is the fledgling Jordan team who did a pretty good job with less than 50 people! In the 2000s, team members travelling to races was limited to 70, but the headcount back a base grew exponentially, and it’s thought that Mercedes currently has circa 1500 people working in multifarious roles for the Brackley based team.

Coming from the small village of Maguiresbridge, County Fermanagh, Bernadette ‘Bernie’ Collins qualified to master’s level in Mechanical Engineering at Queens University Belfast and credits the popular intervarsity Formula Student competition as firing her imagination for motor racing. On leaving academia, Bernie became a Performance/Reliability Engineer at McLaren, working for Jenson Button before joining Force India-Racing Point-Aston Martin as F1 team strategist for seven years and becoming a familiar, respected and winning member of the F1 paddock fraternity.

This well-illustrated 320-page hardback tells how F1 became all-consuming to Bernie, almost to an obsessional degree, but the drivers are the public facade of Grand Prix racing supported by a team of dedicated people working towards the same passionate goal. But on race day with all variables evaluated, including the mystics of tyre degradation, it's the Team Strategist who calls the tune while working under immense pressure to make the split-second decisions which are crucial.

Through Bernie’s eyes as Performance Engineer and Head of Race Strategy, she painstakingly takes you behind the scenes and vividly describes the alchemy of a Formula 1 team, factory and track, to discover what it takes to put two Formula 1 cars on the grid and race competitively. How to Win a Grand Prix provides a detailed insight into the entire process, design, construction, through pre-season testing and on to how a team prepares for each Grand Prix weekend. Once at the races, Bernie recalls hour-by-hour events to allow readers to get an idea of the supreme effort and focus it takes from the pit wall team to get two cars to the podium.

The relentless travel and workload finally took their toll and after 147 races with the team, Bernie left her role as chief of strategy after the Hungarian Grand Prix July 2022 and in 2023 joined Sky Sports’ F1 team as race analyst.  Published 2024 by Quercus Publishing Ref: ISBN 9781529437591, How to Win a Grand Prix provides a fascinating read for anyone interested in premier league motor racing. Available from Waterstones plus other on-line and retail outlets, priced at £22 or $28.