Despite Working With Sebastian Vettel, Ex-Strategist Crowns Sergio Perez for Greatest F1 Achievement

Bernadette Collins has spent a long time in Formula 1 as a performance and strategy engineer. During her full-time F1 career between 2014 and 2022, she worked with multiple world champions, including Sebastian Vettel, at Aston Martin. However, in her book, ‘How to Win a Grand Prix’, she picked Sergio Perez’s maiden win as her greatest achievement.

The 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix in Bahrain was a roller coaster ride, to say the least for Perez and the Racing Point team. During that Grand Prix, Perez achieved a historic victory in Formula 1 after having competed in 190 races.

The Mexican’s win came after a challenging start, where he had to pit early due to a crash on the first lap, dropping him to the back of the field. However, he kept his cool throughout the race and capitalized on the misfortunes of the Mercedes team.

George Russell, who was the stand-in driver for COVID-stricken Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes, initially led the race and seemed set for his first victory. However, during a critical pit stop under a Safety Car on Lap 62, there was a tire mix-up from Mercedes, which forced Russell to make an additional stop.

This mistake from Mercedes helped Perez win the race. In her book, Collins described this race as the pinnacle of her career. She wrote,

“The pinnacle – in every sense – was Sergio ‘Checo’ Pérez reaching the top step of the podium for Racing Point- Mercedes in the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix in Bahrain. It seems incredible now, inconceivable to a younger Bernie living in a quiet rural setting just outside the town of Maguiresbridge.”

2020 was also the season when the Racing Point was dubbed the ‘Pink Mercedes’. Racing Point were alleged to have copied the design of the 2019 Mercedes car that helped the Silver Arrows win the championship that year.

Racing Point was fortunate not to get banned from the 2020 season

When the allegations of copying the Mercedes car were first made, Racing Point didn’t try to hide what they did. They acknowledged that they studied photos of the 2019 Mercedes car and recreated it as best they could within the rules of the sport.

However, when the FIA looked into it closely, they found out that Racing Point had copied the rear brake ducts from the 2019 Mercedes car. This was against the rules. As punishment, Racing Point lost 15 points in the team standings and were fined €400,000 ($432,000).

But much to the frustration of other teams, Racing Point was allowed to continue using the brake ducts and their car. Many team bosses raised their voices, saying that it was not fair because Racing Point would keep the advantage they got from copying for the whole season.

McLaren CEO Zak Brown even accused them of lying about how they copied the car. At the time, the rules did state that teams had to design certain parts of the car themselves, called the ‘listed parts’.

But for many other parts, the rules were unclear and Racing Point took advantage of this gray area. As a result, the FIA later amended the rules to stop this from ever happening again.