Bernie Collins: How to make it from Fermanagh to Formula 1

BBC News NI education and arts correspondentFrom a small school in Fermanagh to Formula 1 is quite a journey, but it is one that Bernie Collins has made.By her mid-20s she was the performance engineer for world champion driver Jenson Button with the top McClaren Formula 1 team."I guess when I was at school I didn't really think about motorsport as a career," she told BBC News NI.

After primary school, she then went on to Mount Lourdes Grammar School in Enniskillen then to Queen's University in Belfast.pursue study in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths subjects than girlsMs Collins told BBC News NI that studying and pursuing a career in engineering "didn't feel that ground-breaking".

That helped her land a job with McLaren - one of the top Formula 1 teams - after applying to them as a graduate in 2009.Two years later she became the performance engineer for Jenson Button, who had won the Formula 1 world championship in 2009. "Generally the difficulty is reacting quickly to events around you - be that safety cars or weather conditions.

One of the high points of her career was Sergio Perez's win for Racing Point in the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix in Bahrain. "The end of the 2021 year we did three races in a row - which I think was Brazil, Qatar, Mexico - and just by the last race I was physically exhausted, struggling with sleep because of jet lag, struggling to be awake during the day."There has been an increase in the number of Formula 1 races in recent years with 24 taking place all round the world in 2024."A number of teams now allow mechanics to take two or three races off," she said.

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