{"id":25532,"date":"2025-07-26T17:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T17:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/25532\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T17:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T17:35:07","slug":"mekies-reveals-last-minute-upgrade-led-to-tsunodas-best-grid-position-for-red-bull-%c2%b7-racefans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/25532\/","title":{"rendered":"Mekies reveals last-minute upgrade led to Tsunoda’s best grid position for Red Bull \u00b7 RaceFans"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies revealed the team applied an upgrade to Yuki Tsunoda\u2019s<\/a> car ahead of qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Before the weekend began Tsunoda said his car would be \u201ca couple of steps behind\u201d Verstappen\u2019s<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe upgraded his car just before qualifying as we are always pushing to the edge on our car parts quantity,\u201d Mekies told the official Formula 1 channel. \u201cBut we decided to take the risk to upgrade his car, so that\u2019s why you may have seen we were nearly a bit late to go out in qualifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tsunoda qualified just three-tenths of a second slower than Verstappen around the longest lap on the F1 calendar. Mekies said the result was \u201cworth the effort from everyone and certainly it helped in supporting his performance to get to a very, very good level.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a> took advantage and beat him to third place by three thousandths of a second.<\/p>\n

\u201cMax went through quite easily in Q1 and Q2,\u201d he said. \u201cI 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.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBut I think the gap to McLaren is probably fair. Obviously it\u2019s a bit frustrating to be beaten by Charles for a few thousandths, but it\u2019s part of the game. I think overall the gap is what it is, two to three tenths to McLaren, I think it\u2019s reflecting the reality, and we\u2019ll fight from there tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve made quite a few choices on the car thinking that tomorrow we\u2019ll get a bit less grip compared to now,\u201d he said. \u201cObviously, we\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if it\u2019s dry we\u2019ll take that as well, it will still be a big tyre management gain, even in the dry.\u201d<\/p>\n

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2025 Belgian Grand Prix
\nBrowse all 2025 Belgian Grand Prix articles<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies revealed the team applied an upgrade to Yuki Tsunoda\u2019s car ahead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[12703,1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55,7942],"class_list":{"0":"post-25532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-2025-belgian-grand-prix","9":"tag-f1","10":"tag-formula-1","11":"tag-formula1","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom","16":"tag-yuki-tsunoda"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}