Collins: We have developed friendly relations with Vettel

Bernie Collins was most recently at Aston Martin as the team’s chief strategist, but has now moved to Sky Sports F1 and has become quite accustomed to the pundit role. Naturally, she is aided by a wealth of experience gained first at McLaren, where she worked with Jenson Button, then in a team at Silverstone, where she has worked since 2015.

Here’s how she answered the question, which of the riders she was most interested in working with. The question came from one of the fans and there was such a postscript: “Tell me what happened to Jenson!”

“I can’t say that with Jenson! laughed Bernie, taking part in the Sky Sports F1 video podcast. – Unfortunately I only worked with him for one year at McLaren, in 2014. But I really liked that experience because I learned a lot, and Jenson then gave me a lot of time to explain certain things, which was very interesting.

Although that period lasted only a year, of course I now have the chance to work with him again, but already here, on the TV channel. In general, riders are very different in character – for various reasons, and everything they shared with me was very helpful.

We have developed friendly relations with Sebastian Vettel, and they took on a special value last year when he was already preparing to end his career in Formula 1. Sebastian is a very calm person. Our AMR22 wasn’t as efficient as we’d hoped, and it was a period where we worked together to understand it better and understand how to act to improve it.

As we didn’t claim the podium there wasn’t much pressure, but it was felt that Sebastian was an experienced professional and had been in similar situations over the years of his career. And thanks to the fact that we developed friendly relations, it was also easier for me to cope with everything … “