If you’re a fan of Formula 1 then you’ve heard of the name Bernie Collins. The Fermanagh woman has exploded onto the main stage as an analyst and commentator on Sky F1 in 2023.
She began her career in the highspeed motorsport in 2009 in a graduate trainee programme with the McLaren Formula One racing team. She rose through the ranks as one of the first female race strategists until she landed the job as head of race strategy for F1 team Aston Martin.
VIP Magazine sat down with Bernie to chat about going from a Fermanagh classroom to the pitwall in Monaco to TV punditry. She chats the future of Formula 1, women in motorsports and flying the Irish flag.
Hi Bernie, how are you? You really are a trailblazer in Formula 1 as one of the first female head of race strategy. When you were school did you plan to get to F1?
No, not really. It’s hard when you’re in school to imagine doing any job and I didn’t really think of Formula 1. There wasn’t obviously any advertisement of who does what in F1. I was never going to be a driver, I was never going in for that for sure, so I didn’t really think about it. It was only actually when I started my degree that I thought about it because other students knew they wanted to work in F1. It was only actually really mid-way through my degree that I started thinking about it when I did Formula Student [a student engineering competition]. That was the first time I really thought about doing it and it sort of spiralled from there. Even when I went to the interview with McLaren, I was like, “This is probably not going to happen.”
You’re not only flying the flag for women in motorsports, you’re flying the Irish flag as well. Are you proud to do that?
Yeah I am you know, well it’s really weird! The support from home is great, and you never take your feedback from social media of course, but you get so many messages from people and you can’t answer them all. I get a lot of messages from people saying they like hearing an Irish voice like theirs. And the piece for Sky, last year when we went back to my school, it showed that I have a very normal background. So it’s possible to do whatever you want no matter your background. It’s great to be fit to show that its really really nice.
It’s great to hear the Irish accent!
I know! It’s great and you know hopefully, people will feel inspired and they’ll go on and do it.
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We have a lot of women working behind the scenes in motorsports now. Do you think the door has opened for women to be a driver in Formula 1 now?
I think it has and I think also we are now advertising careers that are available. And there’s a huge female viewership now as well. I think the last number we had was 40 per cent of F1 viewers were women which is huge for a sport like that. And I think the big thing that’s going to develop a driver, a female driver, is the sponsorship. I think suddenly brands are realising that actually they should be sponsoring F1 because there are women watching. So you’ve got like Charlotte Tilbury car in Formula Academy [the all female race championship], you’ve got Elemis sponsoring Aston Martin. Suddenly female brands are going, “Oh s**t we should get involved in this,” and that I think will encourage more girls. Imagine you were a brand and you were sponsoring the first female driver that would be great or the next female driver. I think there’s more and more opportunity because that’s where women have struggled to break through, seeking that sponsorship and hopefully the female audience is having that.
You’re so right! Formula Academy is different from F1 but Netflix has just released a documentary series about the racing championship. Do you think this could have the same affect as Drive to Survive?
Yeah, I think so, and I think the thing that’s helping F1 Academy is that a lot of little girls watching now. I’ve got friends’ little kids for example are now watching going, “Oh Bernie’s doing that.” Whereas before they’ve only ever seen guys doing that so the thing we need to get an update on the girls in the car and on the pitwall and I think both of those things together will help.
Before we let you go, Bernie, what advice would you give young girls trying to get into Formula 1?
Obviously, try to get the best education you can but do it in something you enjoy. I enjoyed engineering because whatever you’re doing you sort of need to be quite good at it. Then I think the thing is, try to get some experience, it’s difficult to get experience with an F1 team of course, but there are loads of carting tracks, there’s loads of rallies. And the other things is what we struggle with from an F1 team side, is communication and teamwork, we just do things through that, you know I worked in a cafe which has nothing got to do with F1 but it makes you good at communicating and makes you good at working as a team.
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