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significantly contributing to the team's most successful era
... but not towards its success! So carefully worded.
... but not towards its success!
To a certain degree I think when he backed Lewis into Max in 2021 he had a bit of leverage over them and that never transitioned into consistent individual performances.
Not shit stirring the 2021 championship drama, only citing what I feel was a big event in Checo's career path.
It's not exactly smiled on when drivers or teams intentionally manipulate a race. Just for comparison people hate on KMag for defending and stalling cars behind him when his teammate is fighting for a single point. Checo did something that played a major role in a controversial championship decider.
Checo was used as a pawn (willingly or not I can't say) in Red Bull's quest to deliver Max a WDC. I think a lot of his time at Red Bull was an attempted payback for that with hopes that he would perform more consistently with time. I don't think other drivers would've been given so many opportunities for so long with such an obvious gap to the other car. If we think back to Valtteri's time at Mercedes the performance gap was never so severe as he consistently qualified well but then floundered in the race or was the victim of the "second car" strategy. There were A LOT of Mercedes 1-2 finishes, and we never saw that consistently with Red Bull and Checo. Under any other circumstances I think he loses this drive much earlier than he did.
FWIW none of this is meant to hate on Checo. I've enjoyed watching his career until the recent slump and finger pointing when his driving hasn't been where it needed to be. I hope he's able to find success wherever he lands in the future.
Just for comparison people hate on KMag for defending and stalling cars behind him when his teammate is fighting for a single point
People hated it because Kmag broke the rules, kept his place by cutting a corner or by pushing cars wide, got a penalty and continued to hold people up while having no lasting consequences to his own race. If he defended fairly without getting a penalty, I don't think there would have been much hatred
It also wasn't the most successful era. From 2010 to 2013 they won the same amount of drivers championships and two more constructors'.