{"id":300756,"date":"2025-07-29T08:44:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T08:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/300756\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T08:44:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T08:44:12","slug":"red-bull-takes-blame-for-tsunoda-strategy-failure-in-f1-belgian-gp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/300756\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Bull takes blame for Tsunoda strategy failure in F1 Belgian GP"},"content":{"rendered":"

After receiving the latest-spec floor on his Red Bull RB21, Yuki Tsunoda<\/a> was delighted to qualify seventh in Belgium \u2013 his first appearance in Q3 since the Miami GP<\/a> weekend more than two months ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He held on to that position at the belated start of the race but then, apparently inexplicably, pitted for slick tyres a lap later than team-mate Max Verstappen<\/a>, who had stopped at the end of lap 12. That cost Tsunoda track position and, crucially, left him stuck behind the Alpine<\/a> of Pierre Gasly<\/a>, who had qualified 13th\u00a0but was among the first competitors to stop \u2013 with the Frenchman coming in at the end of lap 11.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tsunoda then became mired in the DRS train behind Gasly, running in 11th\u00a0and unable to pass the Alpine due to Gasly’s lower-downforce configuration. Spending 30 laps trying to pass took too much life out of Tsunoda\u2019s tyres and he dropped two places to a charging Oliver Bearman<\/a> and Nico Hulkenberg<\/a> in the final laps.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was our mistake,\u201d said new team principal Laurent Mekies in his post-race press conference.\u00a0\u201cWe wanted to pit him on the same lap as Max [Verstappen], and everything was ready, the crew was out, everything was ready to get both cars, and we simply called him too late.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it’s on us, unfortunately. And one lap made a big difference today \u2013 so he lost, I think, three or four positions, which ultimately stopped his fight for the points.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Red Bull driver advisor Helmut Marko was somewhat churlish, telling reporters that \u201cthere was a miscommunication” with the team and adding that Tsunoda’s \u201cspeed was also not good\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Yuki <\/p>\n

Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing, Laurent Mekies, Red Bull Racing Team Principal<\/p>\n

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool<\/p>\n

Mekies also explained the somewhat peculiar timing of the floor upgrade, which Red Bull fitted between the sprint race and qualifying on Saturday. Tsunoda claimed that not only did it deliver an improvement in overall grip levels, it was also more confidence-inspiring than the previous spec because it was less sensitive and less prone to uncontrolled sliding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the floor, as much as we got a lot of publicity for it, it’s nothing unusual or nothing different here,\u201d said Mekies.\u00a0\u201cYou push very, very hard to get the latest specification as soon as you can at the racetrack. You get it for one car, then you get it for the second car… and sometimes you are surprised because one comes in earlier, one comes in later.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo as soon as it became available, we were then faced with the choice to either wait for the following weekend or to use that slightly unusual window between sprint and main quali, which comes with some risk. It comes with some risk because it was extremely tight to be able to fit the parts of the car.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, the crew did an amazing job, and as you have seen, we were actually slightly late going out for qualifying. And then you normally pay a price because the drivers need to adapt, and it’s not very nice to go into quali with a new-specification car.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut anyway, we felt it was worth the risk and the effort, and Yuki did an amazing job with it to adapt through qualifying to it and certainly did a big step of performance and did a very, very strong quali.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

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Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After receiving the latest-spec floor on his Red Bull RB21, Yuki Tsunoda was delighted to qualify seventh in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[102345,102346,4199,707,4200,749,79,16,15,860],"class_list":{"0":"post-300756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-belgian-gp","9":"tag-circuit-de-spa-francorchamps","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-red-bull-racing","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-yuki-tsunoda"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114935645604142576","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}