How to Win a Grand Prix: From Pit Lane to Podium - The inside Track

by Bernie Collins

'Bernie is not only a great strategist, but also a great team player and competitor' Sebastian Vettel

***THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER***

Race-winning team strategist shows how F1 really works.

Welcome to Bernie Collins' world. Formula 1 drivers are the public face of Grand Prix racing but behind every driver is a team of several hundred people sharing the same passionate desire to win. On race day it's the Team Strategist who calls the shots, working under immense pressure to make split second and crucial decisions. Through her eyes and experience as a Performance Engineer and Head of Race Strategy, Bernie takes you behind the scenes of a Formula 1 team - both in the factory and at the races - to uncover what it takes to put two Formula 1 cars on the grid and go racing.

How to Win a Grand Prix gives incredible insight of the entire process from design and construction, through pre-season testing, and how a team prepares for each Grand Prix. For race weekend itself, Bernie recreates it hour-by-hour to plunge the reader behind the pit wall and see what it's actually like to get from grid to podium.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sports, Audiobook, Biography, Racing, Autobiography, Cars

Audible Audio

First published May 1, 2024

Reviews

[Dan Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, and very easy to understand some more difficult race strategy concepts.

As a Race Strategist at another team, whilst all of the comments are all like explaining my job which I’m familiar with (it is not really an autobiography, it is very much more an explanation of what it’s like to be a Strategist specifically), it’s interesting to hear it from another persons perspective. I’ve recommend it both to my parents and friends so they can have a better understanding of what I do in my role, which sometimes just understanding that some of it is just organising spreadsheets and picking the right colours… I’ve had a very similar experience to Bernie of going from Strategy to Marketing (but now strategy again), and the perspective that you get from leaving the role I can heavily relate to with Bernie.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this! Reading any books related to F1 will always be highly rated for me, but this was especially good in my opinion. Bernie’s so likeable and has been such a valuable addition to the Sky Sports F1 team; I’ve been super excited to read this!

Reading Bernie’s perspective over the course of a Grand Prix weekend as a strategist is so interesting. The way this is written is so easy to understand too, and I love the way she gives simple but very effective explanations for terminology you may not be familiar with. The sheer amount of data and questions alone that the crew on the pit wall have to consider throughout the weekend is mind blowing.

Highly recommend :)

[Aakash Mehta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of boring. She definitely has a lot of great experience as an F1 strategist, but this book is not for an F1 fan, maybe for someone working in F1. Without any interesting storylines or specific insights, my main takeaway from this book is that F1 is much more complex than it seems on the surface or on TV. Every decision has a dozen different perspectives, to be considered within seconds, and still never sure what the result is going to be. To win in F1, you have to spend the most on car design, engine, build, and a bunch of factory stuff. Strategy and racing are then the cherry on top to bring everything together.

[Steven Schmoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to be totally clear that I love Bernie Collins and think she is perhaps the best addition to the Sky Sports F1 commentary team in a long time, but this book just didn’t hit. Most of the information is interesting, especially the pre-race prep sections, but it is written rather poorly in terms of sentence structure, word choice, voice, etc. We don’t get a lot of background on Bernie in her personal life and upbringing other than some quick and punchy sections at the start. She seems like a dynamic, well-spoken, intelligent commentator on the live casts, but not a lot of that seemed to transfer well to text. I feel also that she may just not have enough to write about at this point in her career, especially when you compare this book to the masterpiece that is Adrian Newey’s “How to Build a Car,” which I take it was the inspiration for the title here (apparently Maurice Hamilton’s idea). A largely interesting read, but overall a bit disappointing.

[Tess Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my F1 girlies! What an inspiration to have the perspective of strategy explained by a female leader in her field.

Caused me to have a small crisis over perhaps a wasted opportunity, maybe I should have studied engineering!

[Yevhen Chernenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing guide to an F1 strategist’s role.

This book offers a fascinating window into the day-to-day life of a Formula 1 strategist — from practical packing tips to detailed descriptions of session-by-session workloads. The information is clear, focused, and free of fluff. It’s not a history lesson or a self-praising memoir, but almost an instruction manual for anyone curious about what the strategist role involves — both its challenges and rewards. It also provides a rare look at how life truly unfolds inside the paddock.

Thank you, Bernie — you’re a legend of the sport and a true treasure of a person.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5
As someone fairly new to Formula 1 (I only started watching in May 2024), this is a fantastic look behind the scenes and a peek behind the scenes pit wall. I wouldn’t say this book is for complete newbies or experts in the sport, but is written as a look into the mind of an F1 strategist and gives an idea of what happens from the construction of the car, all the way through to the debrief at the end of a Grand Prix. It’s very insightful and I think in a couple seasons, once I have more knowledge, I’ll re-read this and mark up my copy!

[Ryan Holland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of boring in how this book was put together. Clearly wrote by a ghostwriter as apart from the first few chapters it didn’t feel very authentic or personal. This book is too clinical and dry, and I’m saying this even as a huge F1 fan - who loves the ‘nerdy’ side of the sport. There was also some factual errors which is a shame about drivers at certain teams which should have been picked up before release. A shame as I saw this book in the Silverstone Museum, and I have a lot of respect for Bernie Collins, but this was just a missed opportunity and the story could have been told in a more interesting way.

[Amaia ✡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. It takes the reader from the beggings of Bernie's career in northern Ireland until the glamorous life on the F1 pitlane crew and travelling the world under the spotlights of the most sophisticated engineering sport.
She has a huge talent of making this technical book very accessible, easy to understand and almost relatable to everyone. Following the sport for many years, much of this information wasn’t new, but still I am impressed by the sheer amount or work through immense volumes of data and mathematical models prior to a race in order to prepare the strategy and how everything can sometimes change during a race and needs a split second decision which makes all the difference between glory and losing.

As much as I love Bernie's insights on sky TV and the fact her knowledge is more accessible to us, I can’t help to feel, just like she lets us know by the end of the book, the melancholy of this loss, of her leaving the strategist's role. The life in the pitlane, travelling with the F1 circus is not easy, but definitely has something most of us can only dream about. It's about the camaraderie and the team work of engineering the most technical sport, about the competition in the fiercest of fights, sometimes won or lost at thousands of a second. Throughout the book she makes us feel the ins and outs of how this works. I shed a tear with Bernie when she won her first GP but also when she left the sport as an engineer. And I hope I'll be here to cheer her when she wins again. :)

It’s an absolutely fascinating job and I loved listening to the book in Bernie's narration. A gem for every F1 fan, but I highly recommend it for everyone who ever watched and loved a race.

[Reece Simmonds · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a long time fan of F1, I enjoyed this book. Its pretty much split into two parts. The first focuses on the overall set-up of an F1 team including key roles, what they do and the development of the cars with talk on the simulator and R&D. The second part takes you through a race weekend, from preparation to the chequered flag and beyond. There are also a few standalone chapters, including one about Bernie’s first and only race win and her journey of getting to formula one, which was a nice personal touch.

As someone who already knows a lot about the sport (I like to think anyway!), I did find some of the earlier chapters (especially those surrounding various team roles) a bit less engaging, simply because the content wasn’t new to me. HOWEVER, it was still interesting to get the perspective of someone who’s actually worked in and around those positions.

Bernie has been one of the best additions to Sky F1 in recent years, and it’s great to see more women getting into the sport and taking on roles like hers, with people like Hannah Schmitz being respected as one of the best strategists or like Haas’ new race engineer, Laura Müller who actually became the first female race engineer this year! Representation like this is super important, especially in formula one which has been male dominated since its creation.

Overall i found this book to be super easy to read and informative. It’s not only great for newcomers but even people who have watched the sport for a while! Bernie’s love for the sport is clear throughout, and I’d absolutely recommend it.

[Willow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. What a fantastic book. The structure suits the structure of Formula One so well and the explanations felt so easy to grasp, no matter how complex the concept. There was also the joy of so many fun anecdotes sprinkled in!

Since getting into this sport, Bernie Collins has been a hero of mine. Many of those closest to me will know that I refer to her as my ‘queen’. As a girl currently on a creative graduate scheme with Sky - which I fell into because of my love of F1 - seeing Bernie open her book discussing how she started on a graduate scheme with McLaren (my faves!) and ending the book discussing her new life chapter with Sky Sports F1, I feel incredibly emotional. If I can be half as incredible as Bernie Collins when I grow up, I’ll have won at life.

I’m going to be recommending this to everyone. Yes, it’s only February, but it’s my book of the year ❤️☘️

[Megan Hawley Steinfeld · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent behind the scenes look at the operations of an F1 team. Of the many F1 books I've read, this is top of its class for providing enough basics that it's accessible to people who spend less time than I do thinking about F1, but then dives into enough detail that there is so much to learn even for an aficionado.

[Patrick Polak]

Bernie Collins provides deep insights about the work and life in the F1 paddock. I follow F1 since 1974 (…) but Collins provided so much more information and depth about the strategy than I’ve ever read before.

[Jasper Le Comte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alright, I kind of have only one thing to say about this book, which is that it's a great example of why structure and textual cohesion matter. Fundamentally, a former F1 strategist explaining the intricacies of strategy in great detail sound really interesting if you're a big F1 fan, as I am, and that is in here, but it's just hampered by insufficient care put into the way all that information is presented.

When you pick the book up, it quickly becomes quite clear the entire book is basically a sequence of written-up interviews with Collins. It's apparent by the amount of exclamation marks (which would make for a lethal drinking game), but also the way the text flows and is presented. Sure, it's rewritten enough that it doesn't sound like a transcript, but it's apparent that the text wasn't written from scratch, because it would be structured very differently. It also makes sense that they didn't conduct one massively long interview, but several, but that generates a lot of repetition, judging by the amount of times the book mentions all the factors you have to take into account. Yes, taking factors into account is a large part of the strategist's job, but I read variations on that sentence so many times it became grating by the end. For such an intricate subject, I'd have appreciated better structure and textual coherence, which would have prevented a lot of repetition and made everything a bit easier to keep track of.

Oh, I guess I have another point as well: the book has some personal anecdotes and lived experience sprinkled in, but I didn't find those parts very compelling. Sure, it's technically interesting to hear about when F1 personnel finds time to eat during a race weekend, or when and where they work and such, but those bits felt moreso just sprinkled in to make sure the book wasn't only technical talk. Reading about how the hotels at the European races are usually a bit crappy, so Collins preferred to have breakfast isn't inherently compelling to me, but had the book taken the time to explore that broader experience of trying to take care of yourself in that high-stress environment, I feel like I would have been much more immersed. Now, it all just felt a bit superfluous and unnecessary.

If you're really into F1, I would say this is worth the read, but I really think this could have been a much stronger read if given more time and rewrites.

[Johnny Hurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written and gives a lot of insight into how far reaching the role of chief strategist in a Formula One team.

Sucessfully communicates complex information with ease. It's always great to hear Bernie come on the commentary feed during races, always giving the insightful inputs beyond what F1 fans can discern. The same is true for this book.

[Lauren Albrecht · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this new perspective on a sport I love so much and written by a woman with so much knowledge! Although this book was QUITE technical regarding discussions of engineering as well as strategy, it was very enjoyable and insightful!

[Maren Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

i can’t say the writing was great but the insight was invaluable. much more for a super fan than anything else and would be difficult to follow otherwise. definitely can read like a manual at some times but i think that was kind of the point to an extent.

[Tessa]

The writing was also a bit dry, so the book wasn’t as enjoyable to read as I had hoped. The author's just throwing information at you without giving any examples, so it was hard to absorb.
I didn't particularly enjoy reading this book.

[Alex Gilliam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bernie is a queen. 👑 I loved the way this book was laid out and found all of the details of what happens leading up to (and during/after) a race weekend fascinating! A must read for all F1 fans.

[Lauren Knox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Bernie Collins. I read this entire book in her voice. Very informative and beginner friendly break down into what goes into an F1 weekend. Highly recommend to all F1 fans

[Matt Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed much more than I anticipated, learnt a lot.

[Sigourney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting read about F1 strategy. Bernie Collins provides insight about F1 and the paddock that I had not considered before. Makes me realize that I would never want to be a strategist.

[Jan Prins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and contained little nuggets of things i was not aware of, even being the F1 nerd that i am

[James McCann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t normally write reviews but this book had an exceptional ability to put me to sleep. I found it very interesting, but every time I read it I would be asleep in seconds😂

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up.

Interesting content but hated the writing style.
Definitely need to have some knowledge on F1 before you read.

[Ryan Read · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a well crafted and detailed peek behind the curtain of life on a Formula 1 team. I appreciated the wide breadth of information, from factory to pit lane, from preseason through the final race weekend, through all the departments that work on a car and a team. Simple enough to be digested by anyone but still retaining how complex the daily life of a strategist can be.

[Eve Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe I can be Bernie Collins

[Amanda Sheridan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been a fan of F1 since the late 70’s and, to date, I’ve been to 34 Grands Prix all over Europe, so I had to read this book and if you’re a fan of F1 it’s one for you.
We all have favourite drivers and teams and we all think this one or that one is the GOAT—Greatest Of All Time—but a driver and his team would be nothing without the hundreds of men and woman who do the hard work behind the scenes.
From a small primary school in Maguiresbridge, Co. Fermanagh to Queen’s University in Belfast, Bernie Collins began her F1 career as a trainee with McLaren. Three years later she became a performance engineer. She joined Force India (later to become Aston Martin) and helped Force India finish 4th in the Constructors Championship. She currently works for SKY Sports as a race strategy analyst.
In her book ‘How to Win a Grand Prix: From Pit Lane to Podium-the Inside Track,’ Bernie describes a Team Strategist’s job from prior to the season with a new car to build (that works), pre-season testing and then the many hours of hard work in the build up to the first race.
She describes in detail each step from the three Free Practice sessions, qualifying and the race itself. The many scenarios and ‘what ifs’ needed to allow for changing conditions from everything such as an accident and safety car, to a few spots of rain suddenly throwing all their strategic plans out of the window.
And it doesn’t end when the chequered flag is waved. The team go home with their new data and this is analysed in full in preparation for the next race.
The pressure is immense and it’s not about sitting back and letting the drivers do their thing. An interesting snippet Bernie mentioned was that, at one race, she was wearing a heart monitor and it was obvious from the print-out when the pit-stops took place as her heart rate spiked during them.
I’ve read many biographies of drivers as well as books on various teams (though mostly ones on McLaren—the team I’ve followed since 1979) but this is one of the best behind-the-scenes accounts I’ve ever read.

[ree · Rating 2 out of 5]

so, I have a lot of respect for Bernie Collins; I think she is a brilliant addition to Sky Sports, highly respectable and knowledgable, and a great female representative for F1 alongsides the likes of Naomi Schiff, Laura Winter, Natalie Pinkham & others (not a particular American though). She is one of my favourite people to hear insights from on race weekends, especially regarding startegy and using her knowledge from working as a strategist for Aston Martin/Racing Point.

I don't necessarily have a review of the book - it was okay, it had some blatantly obvious errors in it that I think any F1 fan should've picked up on, and definitely needed a knowledgable editor. for eg; discussing Perez's win in Sakhir 2020 (iconic): Vettel was still at Ferrari, Sainz was at McLaren. one page was discussing the strategy regarding Vettel's Ferrari, then not even half a page later, it's referred to as "the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz". just silly little mistakes that any knowledgable F1 fan if given an opportunity to edit this book before publication could've picked up on, rather than leave it in the hands of editors that may lack the F1 knowledge and details needed to pick up on mistakes like this.

It was ghost written (unsurprisingly, Bernie is a busy woman!), but what I do find fascinating is the trend of F1 media personnel releasing (ghostwritten) books. there's been an influx coming out lately in the last 1-2 years, and I'm just not quite sure what value they're adding besides saturating the market. I read the arc of Will Buxton's book that came out at the end of 2024 and I also thought that was just okay. just seems like these books are just another way to profit off of an already very expensive industry...

I'm a massive F1 nerd, so don't come for me.

[Tara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am full of admiration for this woman making her way to becoming a top strategist in Formula 1 and was interested to read how she got there. However, I already had a good idea about what her job entailed and didn't really find any great insight. I think the most disappointing thing is that the pressures of her work didn't seem to bring her a lot of joy.