As a racing strategist, Bernadette Collins, known as Bernie, worked with many good drivers such as Jenson Button, Nico Hülkenberg and Sergio Perez, but one driver has particularly impressed her over the years: Sebastian Vettel.
The German came to Aston Martin from Ferrari in 2021, where Collins took the reins as chief racing strategist. She says that this news was “very intimidating” for her because Vettel was known in the past for often critically questioning his strategies at Ferrari.
This meant additional pressure for the Northern Irishwoman, especially since, as a strategist, she was not involved in the first test drives after Vettel’s move and was unable to build an early relationship with the German.
“It was very intimidating knowing that he had been so critical in the past,” she says on the Beyond The Grid podcast. “He always asked a lot of questions in the strategy meetings. He was always aware of everything and wanted to understand the plans.”
Collins started working with Vettel and explained to him how they had approached strategy in the past. She felt a little bit of pressure and the feeling of being in the spotlight. “You just want to start off right. It was very important to start on the right foot. And I think we did that quite successfully,” she says.
Vettel himself was “personally much nicer than I expected,” she reveals. “Maybe it was just expectations, but the relationship was really great.”
What made Vettel so strong
This was true not only on a personal level, but also on a professional level, because for Collins, Vettel was strategically a stroke of luck: “He had a very good understanding of what you want to achieve and why it might not work,” she says.
And: “He had a very good memory of what had happened in the past. He would go through previous races and then say: ‘How about, I dunno, 2010?’ And then I said, ‘I haven’t looked back that far.’ But then you have to go back and look at it.”
“Many great drivers, like Sebastian, were able to build up a really good picture of what was happening around them and what your strategy was trying to do,” she continued. “He could imagine the lines we had on paper as if they were happening in real life.”
Nice words to say goodbye
But Vettel and Collins didn’t work together at Aston Martin for too long. The 2022 Hungarian Grand Prix was Collins’ last race for Aston Martin – exactly the race at which the four-time world champion himself announced the end of his career.
After the race, Vettel thanked him on the radio with a message: “Can Bernie hear me? I almost forgot. Thanks for… I was only here with you for two years – one and a half – but it was fun and you’re a great person. Thank you, big kiss.” His race engineer replied: “She’s quite blushing, Sebastian.”
This was very flattering for Collins. “It would have meant even more if he hadn’t stolen the show from me,” she laughs, referring to Vettel’s resignation announcement. But with a four-time world champion of his status and with his strong personality, who has often been critical of strategy in the past, this was a real wow moment for them.
“And then he sort of accepted what we were doing and got behind it and went along with it,” she says. “And then to have that kind of relationship, to the point where he was grateful for the work you put in, that was, yeah, a very special feeling, and it’s nice to be respected on that level .”