Tsunoda Impresses with Upgraded Red Bull: P7 in Belgium and New Direction

Yuki Tsunoda Impresses with his Upgraded Red Bull in Belgium

Yuki Tsunoda celebrated the performance of his Red Bull car, after achieving his best qualifying result since joining the team. Tsunoda obtained seventh place in the classification of the Belgian Grand Prix, demonstrating a significant improvement despite not having managed to enter the top 10 in the sprint classification and in the sprint race. Before the qualifying for the main Grand Prix, Red Bull installed an upgraded floor on the Japanese driver’s car, a modification that was not initially planned for the weekend. Tsunoda has struggled to get close to his teammate, Max Verstappen, since he replaced Liam Lawson, but he felt a big step forward with the updated car.

I’m happy with it. The team did a good job bringing me the upgrades just before qualifying. That was enough to be in this position. Certainly, I feel much better.

Yuki Tsunoda

Tsunoda arrived at the weekend expecting to be behind Verstappen in terms of car development specifications. Tsunoda’s improved performance will be encouraging for the new Red Bull boss, Laurent Mekies. Mekies worked alongside him throughout last year and in the first two races of 2025 as team principal of Racing Bulls.

We improved his car just before qualifying, as we are always at the limit with the number of parts on our car. But we decided to risk improving his car, which is why you may have seen that we were almost a little late for qualifying.

Laurent Mekies

With the new part, Tsunoda felt vindicated by the comments he has been making recently. When asked what the new floor provided him in the car, he said: “A little more grip! Literally. We already saw on paper how much difference we had, I don’t know how many races we had. But considering the difference I had in terms of lap time delta that I have between Max and me, it wasn’t that big.” “I already knew within myself and in the engineering group that we are going in the right direction for me to improve in the way we want. I am glad to have shown it.” “Overall, a little more grip… just the grip was what was a little more sensitive with anything [before]. It never followed [my inputs]. This one handled like… you can be aggressive with it.” Tsunoda has only finished in the points twice in Sunday races since he was promoted to Red Bull, finishing tenth in Miami and Imola. Since then, he has finished 17th, 13th, 12th, 16th and 15th. I had finished Saturday’s sprint race in 11th place.