How to Win a Grand Prix

From Pit Lane to Podium - The inside Track

De: Bernie Collins

Narrado por: 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.©2024 Bernie Collins (P)2024 Quercus Editions Limited

Very technical and informative

This book was a great read. The strategy piece of F1 was always a bit mystical to me and Bernie goes into great detail about what they do…and in the process gave me a much more nuanced view of F1 and the data analytics process. This book is probably not for those new to F1 as it requires a familiarity with the terminology and rules to really be able to follow along. The fact that Bernie narrates too is a huge plus.

Amazing career

Bernie takes you through an amazing life in F1, how strategist deals day by day in this world, and also an amazing X-ray of what is happening during the weekend of F1 through the eyes of a strategist.
Beeing Mexican is not possible to hold the tears remembering Shakir 2020,
Thank you Bernie it is an amazing book

Brutal narration; could have been more informative

I wanted to like this book. It has good ratings and I am a sucker for books about F1. Unfortunately, this book by Bernie Collins was a tough listen for two main reasons.

First, Bernie Collins does the narration herself. If you have heard her on TV you know she has a strong Northern Irish accent. It is easy enough to understand but the problem is that her narration is completely unprofessional. She is literally incapable of reading any word ending in "-ing" how it is supposed to be read. For example, in the chapter "The Truth of Testing" she reads the word "testing" as "testin'" repeatedly. Over and over. It sounds so unprofessional. And it isn't just that word, it is ANY word that ends in "-ing" throughout the entire book. It's one thing to speak like that in your natural environment, but for the recording of an audiobook, I would have expected correct pronunciation. This book would have greatly benefited from a professional narrator.

Second, the book really isn't that interesting. It is extremely superficial. Lots of minutiae about travel, losing luggage, food catering as well as discussion of what her job as a race strategist actually entailed. And even those discussions are very high level and not very interesting (e.g., describing how they tracked Mercedes with a pink line during "testin'" and how she often confused George Russell and Lewis Hamilton). It is a bunch of fluff. Anyone who has read about F1 or watched F1 for more than a few months will probably know all of this - or at least know enough to know that they don't care about most of this. It improves slightly toward the end as she describes FP1, FP2, FP3, Quali and race day and tire strategy in particular. But most of this probably won't be new for F1 die-hards.

Now that Formula 1 has gotten extremely popular in the US, books are coming out of the woodwork. Between this book, "Grand Prix" by Will Buxton, "How to Read F1" by Jennie Gow, the forthcoming "On the Grid" by Luke Smith, etc. there is no shortage of books out there trying to appeal to the F1 beginner. My advice is to read "The Formula" by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg if you are looking for a great intro. As for this book by Bernie Collins? I'm not sure who the target market is. It has some limited appeal as an insight into race strategy but that only goes so far. It's probably better in hardcover than audiobook format for the reasons I mentioned. And if it is technical stuff you want, read Adrian Newey's book.