Sky Sports F1 Podcast: A look at F1 strategy with former Aston Martin director of race strategy Bernie Collins | F1 news

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Bernie Collins is on the latest edition of the Sky Sports F1 Podcast for a special Q&A session on F1 race strategy.

Collins, formerly Aston Martin’s head of race strategy, joined Sky Sports’ F1 team at the start of the season.

In the podcast, which you can listen to via the player belowCollins gives a fascinating insight into life as an F1 strategist, his favorite Grand Prix strategies, the use of code words in racing, his journey into the sport and much more.

What does an F1 strategist do?

– A strategist does millions of jobs, but I think everyone is thinking about Sunday’s race day.

“What you try to do is plan how the race could go so that at the start of the race you have in mind how many stops you think it will be, what tires you’re going to use, but then during the race you react to everything that’s going on around you – the safety cars, the weather conditions, other drivers etc.

“Ultimately your goal is to get the best possible finish for your two cars and usually the strategists you see on the pit wall are working on both team cars. You’re trying to get the best possible points for the team. for those drivers.

“But it’s a lot more than just planning a lot before we get to the event, what we think it’s going to be, looking at how we might want Friday to go and what we want to learn from the tires. what other data we’re trying to get, like pit losses or thresholds crossed.

“Then through qualifying you’re trying to get a good track position to give the drivers the best chance to get a clean lap, or trying to decide if you need to run again or use new tires and all that sort of thing. .

“Then after the weekend there’s a lot of analysis of ‘How was your weekend?’ What can we do better? What can we learn?’ So everyone thinks about the competitive element, but there’s also a lot of before and after.”

How often is the race strategy recalculated during the race?

“We recalculate a lot, like every round or change of position. It’s a mix of strategy software and human calculations.

“The strategy is built from that – if you just think about the fastest race without any interaction with the cars – we look at tire degradation, so how quickly the lap time slows down during the race, what is the loss of pit stop time, the life of the tire and how many laps you can do on it and the speed difference between the tires.

“Everything that makes up your model, and during the race the software gives you indications that the degradation is greater than expected, so the lap time drops faster than you expected or the tire life is shorter.

“There’s a lot of different inputs to the model. But as people at the factory and on the body wall, we discuss what changes we want to add to the model at that point – so we can shorten the life by a few rounds and the model quickly resets, which is the fastest race until the end.. But we discuss it throughout i’m wondering if the driver can have a little more control and stretch that life or whatever it might be.

“There are a lot of discussions and it’s a mix of software and the human element.”

For more Q&As, listen to the latest Sky Sports F1 Podcast via the widget above.

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The Formula 1 season continues with the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on 28-30. April, and the first sprint weekend of 2023 will be shown live on Sky Sports F1. Watch Saturday’s sprint at 2:30 p.m. and Sunday’s race at 12 p.m. Get Sky Sports