Red Bull Team director Laurent Mekies says that the delay until the start of the Belgian Grand Prix surprised the team after it had opted for a wet weather on his cars.
Max Verstappen won the sprint on Saturday with a low downforce arrangement, which means that the high top speed is used in dry conditions. With rain forecast for Sunday, Red Bull then changed his approach to qualifying on the basis of the weather, but 90 minutes passed between the original attempt to start the race and then finally racing on a dry track, where nobody does more than ten racing rounds on the intermediate products before switching to slicks.
“I think we are all surprised by what time we started the race,” said Mekies. “I know for sure that the FIA had its own considerations, but certainly for us as a team it surprised us, because we fundamentally not only waited for the rain to stop, but also on almost the sun to come out, and then we still had many laps behind the safety car.
“So again, I am sure the FIA had its own reasons. In our specific case, after they have biased our cars to the rain, it certainly costs the American performance. But it is part of the game.”
Mekies pointed out how difficult to catch up appeared in dry conditions during the weekend, because demonstrating the opposite set -up approach was necessary to make progress, because Max Verstappen was limited to fourth place behind Charles Leclerc.
“It is clear that the fact that we did not help so little wet running. It is something that we had made fairly heavy choices, thinking of a wet race. In the end the rain came, but we didn’t get many great races [laps]. So it certainly has an influence on the race, it is part of the game.
“I think there was very little opportunity to catch up on the dryer. At the end of the day, Max spent every second round in Charles’s gearbox. I don’t think we saw a lot of catch -up movements on this race on the dryer. And with our choices on Downforce it would have been unlikely that we would have enabled them in the dry.
“So it is what it is. You start fourth, is defeated by Charles with three thousandth of a second [in qualifying]And finish fourth. “
The dry running also damaged the chances of Yuki Tsunoda to score points after Mekies had admitted that a team error cost him his place in the top ten and he was unable to recover those positions.
“So for Yuki it was our fault. We wanted him in the same round wells as Max, and everything was ready, the crew was out, everything was ready to get both cars, and we just called him too late. So it’s on us, unfortunately, and one round made a big difference, so he lost, I think, three or four positions, who eventually stops his fight for the points.”
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