{"id":48829,"date":"2025-08-06T21:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T21:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/48829\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T21:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T21:57:08","slug":"red-bull-deliver-clear-second-seat-priority-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/48829\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Bull deliver clear second seat &#8216;priority&#8217; statement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has delivered a clear statement that the team&#8217;s &#8220;priority&#8221; with its second seat is to give Yuki Tsunoda what he needs, rather than make a driver change.<\/p>\n<p>Tsunoda has struggled since replacing Liam Lawson from the Japanese Grand Prix, and <a href=\"https:\/\/racingnews365.com\/yuki-tsunoda-sets-unwanted-red-bull-record-as-f1-woes-continue\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">has broken unwanted Red Bull records this season<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Japanese driver recently endured the worst qualifying run of any Red Bull driver, but has now taken an even worse record.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Excluding retirements, Tsunoda is the first Red Bull driver to go seven successive point-less races, adding to what is already a troubling campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Tsunoda has scored just seven of the Milton Keynes-based outfit&#8217;s 194 points this season, putting more pressure on Max Verstappen to challenge the lead places.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Some have called for Red Bull to conduct a second driver change of the year, although Mekies has ruled that out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The priority is to give Yuki what he needs to perform,&#8221; Mekies told Sky F1. &#8220;That&#8217;s where, with regards to the second seat, the priority is. It&#8217;s what the team is concentrating on.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They have been trying that for a number of races. Now we are trying to find ways together to make a further step.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mekies added: &#8220;But, you know, there is no reason why Yuki&#8217;s performance cannot be what we have seen in the past. That&#8217;s what we are concentrating on right now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tTsunoda&#8217;s recent progress<\/p>\n<p>Despite poor finishing results, Tsunoda has made progress in the last two races after receiving a new floor in the Belgian Grand Prix.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>His lap time deficit to Verstappen has significantly reduced across Belgium and Hungary, to the extent that he was just over one-tenth of a second slower than his team-mate at the Hungaroring.<\/p>\n<p>Asked if he was responsible for Tsunoda receiving the new floor in the Belgian GP, Mekies insisted: &#8220;No, no, absolutely not. It&#8217;s a team decision.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All the team is trying to give Yuki the right confidence and the right tools, and he is working very well with this group.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You need that string of good feelings with a car, a good qualifying, and a good race to perhaps extract the next steps. And that&#8217;s where we&#8217;re trying to get to.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has delivered a clear statement that the team&#8217;s &#8220;priority&#8221; with its second&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-48829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}