Laurent Mekies’ upgrade call revealed with Yuki Tsunoda performance reward

Yuki Tsunoda’s Red Bull received a last-minute upgrade before qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix.

The Japanese driver claimed seventh place on the grid, three-tenths of a second behind Max Verstappen, with Tsunoda taking his best grid position of his Red Bull tenure so far.

Laurent Mekies makes upgrade call before qualifying

Settling into his first race weekend as team boss at Red Bull, Laurent Mekies oversaw a key decision to give Tsunoda an upgraded part that was initially planned for Verstappen’s stockpile.

Tsunoda’s hefty crash at Imola earlier this summer had put him on the back foot regarding being on the latest specification parts due to the small numbers of components manufactured.

Coming into the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, Tsunoda had outlined that he was expecting to run the same specification floor as he had at Silverstone, while Red Bull’s newly updated floor would be fitted to Verstappen’s RB21.

A second floor of the upgraded specification, initially earmarked as a spare for Verstappen, was instead fitted to Tsunoda’s car just before qualifying, although Tsunoda was still left with the older specification front wing.

With Tsunoda producing his best performance of the year so far, Mekies explained to F1TV afterwards that a decision had been made to give him as much of the upgrade package as possible. The risk in doing so would be that, should Verstappen have picked up any floor damage in qualifying, the change of specification of floor under parc ferme conditions would trigger a pitlane start.

“For Yuki, it was a very, very good step forward through the weekend, so it’s good to see him in Q3,” Mekies said.

“Finishing there, I’m sure will give him a good boost in confidence. We upgraded his car just before qualifying as we are always pushing to the edge on our car parts quantity, but we decided to take the risk to upgrade his car.

“That’s why you may have seen we were nearly a bit late to go out in qualifying, but it was worth the effort from everyone. And certainly it helped in supporting his performance to get to a very, very good level.”

Speaking to the media, including PlanetF1.com, after qualifying, Tsunoda revealed his happiness with a car that he felt was “much better” and explained how the floor had played a part in that.

“Considering the difference I’ve always had in terms of laptime delta, between Max and myself, that’s huge,” he said.

“So I knew in myself and my engineering group, that we are in the right direction, myself to improve in the way we want happy that I approve it.

“But yeah, generally, a bit more grip. The previous one was more sensitive, easier to slide. With this one, you can be aggressive, I would say.”

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Thanking his mechanics for getting the upgrade made in time for qualifying, he said, “The upgrade allowed me to really push and drive much closer to the limit than has been possible previously, the car is sliding less and is a lot more forgiving, really it’s a huge credit to the team.”

Tsunoda has been reunited with Mekies as his team boss, having driven for Racing Bulls under the Frenchman in 2024 and for the first two races of this season before being called up to Red Bull under former team boss Christian Horner.

“Seeing Laurent at the end of Qualifying gave me flashbacks from when we worked together at Racing Bulls,” he said.

“He smiled directly at me as soon as I pulled in today and it really boosted my confidence.”

With the weather forecast suggesting a strong chance of rain on Sunday, Tsunoda said he’s hopeful of the skies remaining clear.

“We know that it is likely to rain but our hybrid set up means that we are prepared for the wet or the dry,” he said.

“But, obviously, I would prefer the dry. My main focus now is on scoring points tomorrow and extracting as much performance as possible from the car.”

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