... 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.