31/07/2025 06:30
Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies has explained the "risky" decision
behind giving Yuki Tsunoda a new specification of floor at the
Belgian Grand Prix. After an 11th-place finish in the Sprint race,
Red Bull opted to use the window where parc ferme reopens to fit
the new specification of floor to Tsunoda's RB21 ahead of grand
prix qualifying. There, on the same spec of car as Max Verstappen,
Tsunoda put in his best performance for Red Bull in qualifying,
claiming seventh place and finishing 0.342s behind his team-mate.
Tsunoda's previous best for Red Bull was 0.533s slower in Austria,
whilst his best position was eighth in Saudi Arabia, as Mekies
explained the thought process behind the change "which came with
some risk." "With the floor, we got a lot of publicity for it, but
it is nothing unusual or nothing different," Mekies told media,
including RacingNews365. "You push very hard to get the latest
specification as soon as you can at the track, and you get it for
one car, and then you get it for the second car, and it is based on
when the parts are coming. "Sometimes, you are surprised because
one comes in earlier and one comes in later, so as soon as it
became available, we were faced with a choice to wait for either
the following weekend or to use the slightly unusual window between
the Sprint and main qualifying [to fit it on Tsunoda's car], which
comes with some risk. "Normally, you pay the price because the
driver needs to adapt, and it is not very nice to go into
qualifying with the new specification, but we felt it was worth the
risk and effort. "It was extremely tight to be able to fit the
parts, so the crew did an amazing job, as did Yuki, adapting to it
through qualifying and certainly made a big step in performance and
did a very strong qualifying."
