Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies has explained the "risky" decision behind giving Yuki Tsunoda a new specification of floor at the Belgian Grand Prix.
After an 11th-place finish in the Sprint race, Red Bull opted to use the window where parc ferme reopens to fit the new specification of floor to Tsunoda's RB21 ahead of grand prix qualifying.
There, on the same spec of car as Max Verstappen, Tsunoda put in his best performance for Red Bull in qualifying, claiming seventh place and finishing 0.342s behind his team-mate.
Tsunoda's previous best for Red Bull was 0.533s slower in Austria, whilst his best position was eighth in Saudi Arabia, as Mekies explained the thought process behind the change "which came with some risk."
"With the floor, we got a lot of publicity for it, but it is nothing unusual or nothing different," Mekies told media, including RacingNews365.
"You push very hard to get the latest specification as soon as you can at the track, and you get it for one car, and then you get it for the second car, and it is based on when the parts are coming.
"Sometimes, you are surprised because one comes in earlier and one comes in later, so as soon as it became available, we were faced with a choice to wait for either the following weekend or to use the slightly unusual window between the Sprint and main qualifying [to fit it on Tsunoda's car], which comes with some risk.
"Normally, you pay the price because the driver needs to adapt, and it is not very nice to go into qualifying with the new specification, but we felt it was worth the risk and effort.
"It was extremely tight to be able to fit the parts, so the crew did an amazing job, as did Yuki, adapting to it through qualifying and certainly made a big step in performance and did a very strong qualifying."
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