Perez clung onto P2 in the 2023 F1 drivers’ stand༒ings despite fears he would fail to finish behind Re𝓀d Bull teammate Max Verstappen.

After months of sp🎃eculation that he could be ditched from his 2024 seat, Perez is finally set to return in the tricky role as Verstappen’s t🍃eammate.

“I think his re♈putation has taken a hammering,” Be🃏rnie Collins, his former strategist at Force India, told the Beyond the Grid podcast. 

“And I think when we went into the start of the year, he was very strong and I ཧwa🌠s surprised at how strong he was against Max. 

“I 100% have a soft spot for Checo, 🌳because Checo for many years was the person scoring points in the team𒐪 doing things like the Russia 2015 strategy, doing what was asked of him.”

Perez shone by finishing o🍃n the podium in Russia eight years ago after a masterclas🍃s in tyre management.

Collins continued: “He was ve💖ry easy to work with in terms of going through the analysis afterwards.&🌳nbsp;

“He was very easy to work if you had a bad qualifyi🦩ng, because he would immediately turn it around and be good for the race. 

“He’s not the driver that Max is. Max is a much stronger driver. He's probably not the strategist that Sebastian was, because Sebastian is a much 🐼stronger strategist. 

“But he was very good at the tyre management stuff and🌺 he worked very well with his old engineer, Tim, on improving his qualifying.

“At one stage he was very poor in qualifying, which was definitely his weakness, so he worked at improvi🎃ng that. 

“I would say Sebastian is probably the best driver I've worked with, but Checo in that team with the pit wall group that we had, that’s not that much different today, did a ♚lot of good things with that car.”

Perez’s ability to move on arguably contrasts with the slump that he found himܫself inꦇ during this year, when his future at Red Bull was in doubt.

“It was amazi൲ng back then,” Collins remembered a🅠bout their Force India days.

“There was at least one point where you have a bad qualifying for whatever reason. I🥂 would always come into the office a bit deflated🍬, like ‘that's not what we expected, we wanted much more, it's going to be a difficult race’, whatever the case may be. 

“And very often, Checo would be in there already going ‘right, what are we going to do in the race? We’re start🐼ing P18’ or whatever it was. 

“I was like, ‘I'v🌊e not even got over the negativity yet, and you're already asking me how we're going to fix it’.

“You've obviously not simulated a P18 start or whatever. I always felt that, particularly his family around him, he had a very strong e🌱motional resilience at that stage. 

“Obviously, it's very different when you're the driver that’s scoring the most points. It’s a verജy different siꦚtuation to Red Bull.”

Perez’s first F1 grand priꦬx victory was three years ago in Sakhir with Col🔯lins as his strategist at Racing Point.

From starting in fifth, he was soon at the back of the grid after a clash with Charles Lecl🍌erc.

“That was an interesting race because we did Bahrain the week before. The gar♒ages haven't moved, the pit wall꧒s haven't moved, your hotel hasn't changed, All these things haven't changed,” Collins said. 

“But the track is now very different. The pit straight looks the same, turn one looks to see him, but the track is very, very different requirements꧟.

“The first weekend's high degradation, the second week is low deg. The first weekend's very easy to overtake beca🌳use of the hܫigh deg, second weekend isn't. 

“The first weekend is multiple stops, the second weekend isn't. You need to get everyone aligned that this is a very different race – it’s not a normꦓal Bahrain anymore.

“🐼A lot of people, I 🧸think, were still thinking of multiple stops, still thinking of, you know, in the final Safety Car that they should box and put on new tyres. Well, we were thinking the deg’s quite low, whatever.

“We wer♉e forced to start on a soft tyre. That was a regulation then, because we qualified so well.

“But we alw🐽ays work out where we would start on if we had free choice. We knew that the soft wasn't the quickest tyre – the medium was the quickest tyre.

“We knew that a medium/hard one-stop was going♔ to be much qu💞icker than the soft/hard one-stop that we were on. We knew all of that before we went into the race.

“On Lap 1, when Checo crashed, everyone’s trying to figure out if the car's damag🍌ed, if we need to do a pit stop, what we need to do, when we need to💃 do it. 

“Actually, the information coming back from the car was fine. We didn't need to do a pit stop – but we did a pit stop for the medium tyre, bಌecause we knew it was the fastest strategy.

“Chris, Checo’s engineer at the time. turned to me and goes, ‘are you really sure about this?’ It’s the easiest decision I've ever had to make o🧸n the pit wall. I was so confident it was the right thing to do.

“Because we knew that the degradatꦰion on the soft wou🐼ld mean it was not the quickest tyre. And we were last and there was a Safety Car anyway, so we had nothing to lose by making that decision.

“I think🌌 there was very little time to have full buy-in from Checo. We always work out what ou๊r ‘bail-out’ tyre would be if we had to do a pit stop. 

“So if we had to do pit stop, we knew it was going to be a medium, that was already decided. So the only decision was, we🎀 don't need a pit stop.&nb൩sp;

“We don't need a front wing, we don’t need any of thes✱♒e things. It was still 100% the right thing to do.

“The car was quick and Checo was quick. So it's not just down to that strategy decision, but it would have been mu𝓡ch more difficult without that strategy decision. And then the next s𝄹trategy decision being, at that final Safety Car, not to do a pit stop when lots of other people did a pit stop.”