The use of Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) is increasing in the automobile industry because of the demands of light-weighting to increase fuel efficiency and improve crashworthiness. Hot stamping steels are a grade of AHSS. In the hot stamping process, the steel blank is stamped in a die in the austenitic condition and then die quenched to obtain a larlgely martensitic microstructure resulting in a component with high tensile strengths exceeding 1 GPa. The forming loads in hot stamping are considerably lower and spring back is almost entirely eliminated. In this research work, this process was physically simulated in Gleeble™, a thermal-mechanical simulator, to understand the effect of cooling rate, phase transformations, and strain on the forming behaviour of hot stamping steels. To study the influence of the cooling rate and phase transformations on the spring-back behaviour during hot stamping, a novel V bending technique has been introduced. V-bending was carried out by applying a compressive force along the longitudinal plane of AHSS steel strips at forming temperatures. After V-bending, the specimens were cooled at different cooling rates while maintaining the forming loads to simulate die quenching. Results indicate that the spring-back decreases and becomes close to zero (at a cooling rate of 20 K s-1) with an increase in cooling rate for a hot stamping steel. Further increase in cooling rate results in spring-forward owing to the formation of an increased volume fraction of martensite. To study the influence of strain in the austenite phase on the subsequent phase transformations and mechanical properties, steel strips are subjected to various strains (0.03, 0.06 and 0.09) at 1173 K using a Gleeble™ and quenched to room temperature at a cooling rate of 70 K s-1. Results indicate sluggishness in the kinetics of austenite to martensite transformation with applied strain is due to the selective growth of martensite variants with higher misorientation angles. The mechanical properties of as-quenched specimens correlate with martensite variant selection and the increase in lath size.