New Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies revealed the team applied an upgrade to Yuki Tsunoda’s car ahead of qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix.
Tsunoda rewarded them with his best qualifying position of the season so far, taking seventh on the grid, just three places behind team mate Max Verstappen.
Before the weekend began Tsunoda said his car would be “a couple of steps behind” Verstappen’s in terms of development specification this weekend. However Mekies confirmed the team rushed some new parts to his car before the decisive qualifying session for the grand prix.
“We upgraded his car just before qualifying as we are always pushing to the edge on our car parts quantity,” Mekies told the official Formula 1 channel. “But we decided to take the risk to upgrade his car, so that’s why you may have seen we were nearly a bit late to go out in qualifying.”
Tsunoda qualified just three-tenths of a second slower than Verstappen around the longest lap on the F1 calendar. Mekies said the result was “worth the effort from everyone and certainly it helped in supporting his performance to get to a very, very good level.”
Verstappen was disappointed with his qualifying result having looked on course for third place before making a mistake on his only lap on new tyres in Q3. Charles Leclerc took advantage and beat him to third place by three thousandths of a second.
“Max went through quite easily in Q1 and Q2,” he said. “I think [his] Q3 laps certainly felt a little bit more more difficult to extract everything from the car, the balance a bit less together. Nonetheless, there are some serious improvements, corner to corner.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free
“But I think the gap to McLaren is probably fair. Obviously it’s a bit frustrating to be beaten by Charles for a few thousandths, but it’s part of the game. I think overall the gap is what it is, two to three tenths to McLaren, I think it’s reflecting the reality, and we’ll fight from there tomorrow.”
Verstappen used a lower-downforce configuration for the sprint race but has changed to a higher-downforce trim for the grand prix, when rain is expected.
“We’ve made quite a few choices on the car thinking that tomorrow we’ll get a bit less grip compared to now,” he said. “Obviously, we’ve increased our downforce significantly, so in that context, I think the rain is probably the best chance we have to reduce further the gap to McLaren.
“But if it’s dry we’ll take that as well, it will still be a big tyre management gain, even in the dry.”
Go ad-free for just £1 per month
>> Find out more and sign up
Miss nothing from RaceFans
Get a daily email with all our latest stories – and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:
2025 Belgian Grand Prix
Browse all 2025 Belgian Grand Prix articles